Litany in Praise of Italian Cuisine
The food I ate in Italy deserves a litany of praise.
An art unto itself, it satisfied so deeply
I expected to rise each morning cured of hunger—
forgetting hunger, like longing, is a ritual.
Category: Featured Poems
The Tuscan Countryside
Drive as a passenger through Tuscany,
and even if you squint
or fall asleep, but catch brief glances
through curtained blinks,
Da Vinci’s Drawing
In the Venetian Accademia,
I stood quietly
before a study of flowers—
their bends and curls precise,
examined.
As We Walk the Land We’ve Tilled along the Coast
You pick lemon basil off the stem— / feed me green beans wet with dew.
In the center of our garden, / there is a fish sculpture of adobe.
Daphne
I was too aware of my freedom— / the taste of summer in my mouth,
and sun on my nakedness. / I did not recognize that same light
when he rose to meet me. / Or did I? Is that why I ran?
My Latest Goddess
Today I will be Phragmites, the many-bodied,
pale reeds lifting skyward
from the scalp of Tiana Bay.
Unearthing Jupiter: A Crown For A Slave
For giving voice to slavery’s strangled cries,
Just dig for his lost words, stitched in the loam—
Under red roots… between white alibis—
Patterned in clay, the fossils of each poem
The Sea Cave of My Mother
When I was young, after my father died,
I sometimes longed to burrow down, and sleep
inside my mother’s womb, where I could hide
within my life-source, cradled in the deep—
The Persistence of Memory
Our house clocks stopped the day my father died—
at three, the very hour that he passed.
No catch of shifting gears, no pulse defied
his absence. Time itself mourned him…
The First Birth
(I have been born inside him, too.) I am
my mother’s goldfinch, thistle-eater of
her womb. I sing her blood’s music, enjamb
the sounds her heart and breathing made above
my new ears…
The Tuscan Countryside
Drive as a passenger through Tuscany,
and even if you squint
or fall asleep, but catch brief glances
through curtained blinks,
Da Vinci’s Drawing
In the Venetian Accademia,
I stood quietly
before a study of flowers—
their bends and curls precise,
examined.
As We Walk the Land We’ve Tilled along the Coast
You pick lemon basil off the stem— / feed me green beans wet with dew.
In the center of our garden, / there is a fish sculpture of adobe.
Daphne
I was too aware of my freedom— / the taste of summer in my mouth,
and sun on my nakedness. / I did not recognize that same light
when he rose to meet me. / Or did I? Is that why I ran?
My Latest Goddess
Today I will be Phragmites, the many-bodied,
pale reeds lifting skyward
from the scalp of Tiana Bay.
Unearthing Jupiter: A Crown For A Slave
For giving voice to slavery’s strangled cries,
Just dig for his lost words, stitched in the loam—
Under red roots… between white alibis—
Patterned in clay, the fossils of each poem
The Sea Cave of My Mother
When I was young, after my father died,
I sometimes longed to burrow down, and sleep
inside my mother’s womb, where I could hide
within my life-source, cradled in the deep—
The Persistence of Memory
Our house clocks stopped the day my father died—
at three, the very hour that he passed.
No catch of shifting gears, no pulse defied
his absence. Time itself mourned him…
The First Birth
(I have been born inside him, too.) I am
my mother’s goldfinch, thistle-eater of
her womb. I sing her blood’s music, enjamb
the sounds her heart and breathing made above
my new ears…
