“When I began writing poems about my parents’ deaths, which happened three months apart, it was difficult to write anything. It was especially difficult to write grief poems and want them to be…

“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…