“The me that is me eats cheese and wishes there were more chocolate in the gorp. The you that is you fixes on the only point you cannot reach, a messy hike over…

“In the dispiriting wake of a dispiriting election season, I felt the only sustainable way forward would be to choose kindness and love—the soft power of water—not the obdurate hardness of anger and…

“My brother bought/ a dime bag and a revolver from a guy named Kool-Aid./ My mother was crowned a welfare queen, and drove/ a Cadillac assembled out of political mythology./ I smoked my…

“He went to the kitchen for water, for air, for the screws that tightened in his chest, & when he returned it was if she had diminished to a viceroy of herself, nothing…

“Bessie’s gone under the water,/baby held high in the air/hoping that someone will grab her./Safety was only a few streets away/when the boat capsized/into the flooded street./Men in the nearby john boats/quickly plucked…

“I believe, oh yes! We will get there./We’ll row out from these islands/where we’re marooned, sorting shells/and scribbling notes to send/into the dark. We’ll gather/on that porch and lift our glasses/in a salute…

“The game was simple:/get to the city center, harass the other boy’s soldiers./Like my brother and cousins, it was always boys,/but on this box a yellow chick, harried, flees,/and a young rabbit looks…

“Like my father and grandfather before me, I paint/these walls to the light of a torch usually held/by an apprentice, my son. Today, I wedge the torch/in a crevice as my boy crosses…

“’There is no/such thing as/piano accompaniment’/becomes difficult/for him to say in/his mellifluous voice/of thick, dark oatmeal/However, if/‘There is no/such thing as/piano on the streets/of New York/at 9 a.m. this day/in the year of…

“Form can’t hold me. My fleshy vessel contains too much./Metrics can suppress a message. To say, braves feats of strength./What does the Milky Way weigh? What is the meter of galaxy?/Through math, we…