The river / splinters / its many / tributaries, / veins feeding / new shores / The cutting stone / juts

“How quickly this life does go by.” Tonight / I wrote the last letters / to my poetry students.

Trees living in their skin-smell, Appalachia has no need of my white poet / blouse and ripped jeans. The world as I knew it, gone, white as cotton balls

how is it / that you force-fuck / and call us whores / you tell us we only care / about your size, your wallet / when we’ve bought you flowers / yet there’s only dirt in your palms

I find the court bundles, / find the judge who / smeared my face with war paint, / fingered my veins for Pakistani valves like / my blood could be distributing homemade bombs.

a sophomore from art class. could he paint. i kept / his scraps of craft paper / and stray eyelashes in a jewelry box my grandma bought / in italy.

This is a body / You can touch me / I am organic matter / moving constantly.

On a day I am walking with my cane / in Starbucks / the lady behind me inquires, / from her wheelchair, / if I am recently disabled.

A swirl of trash – / I’m dodging it. / A gust of nasty wind. / Now you’re about to be / even more remote.

the world ran out of people / but we’re still here / we do normal things / take the subway home to / each other hold hands / when no one’s looking

I heard in a Black boy town / there was a pool filled / with red / and the white people

The sky was a color / she loved most — / the holy blue / before Eid mornings.

Day 1: I woke and opened my eyes to a quiet morning, trying to feel if it was the end of an era.

On the streets of the two cities is found / a pattern or practice of conduct that violates / the Constitution or federal law

It is September 23, 2016, and you’re reading this because our classmates, faculty, campus, community, state, and nation didn’t listen last time