Painted Fingers in the Sky

after Selda Bağcan

everytime i wait in the days in the doctor's office in the tall building at the center

of the park i’m hoping my daughter does not get 

asthma yes, yes, i’m opening the fruit, yes, yes i’m opening the

pool yes, yes, i’m seeing the sky split the tower all powders

gather in her lungs

built a future from the shells of the war on my long drive from one 

dirt area to another in the line waiting again with the barnacles

growing on my skin yes, yes the wait was so long yes yes, I was 

open to the salt yes yes, the beverage was in dusty glass and 

inside he took my basket.

Untitled (vengeance)

silly rope bondage on the four employees that weren’t working from home yes i swear to get a job with the milk eyes with the lake eyes to lay eggs in my flesh all nymphs all meal mortified with the rectangle of light on her eyes all the poets wake up and put their heads together around the rose: make it as dangerous, or for lack of impact, as inconvenient sabotage, the only poem from the belly in the river face down for hours in the oil drum walking backwards though time stabbing dads cant stop got a problem of showing you this throat again the throat or the four employees whatever comes first the water hats have become black he took forever on the weft the baby girl is lonely and that is enough for a lifetime of poems on the flooded pedestal rig fortune coin polity dice apple seeds apple core without seeds mallika’s silver leaf nightshade wilmington dear boeing i cut out all these hearts for u it took me days and i only made it to the letter M Manal Moamen Majed Abu Al-Awf (0 years old) we burned the whole building it felt good when the licking began.

After the baby died the grandmother entered a name into state record it was Princess Aisha

i did not watch the red sand as it flew out of the tunnel of bone the leaflets descending like moonlit birds
i did not pull my head under
the sheer gown

never grasped at asphalt soaked with snow i did not shop at target, didn’t
waste gas

instead took boats loaded
with munition across the sea hand-placed the penetrating copper on the rim of the undercarriage

i never piled rocks for Princess Aisha

Notes for audio, in chronological order:
Speech: Comrade blockading Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque NM Poem: Dove, Roswell NM
Song: Robert Nelson, Coral Springs FL
Speech: Comrade blockading Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque NM

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