POEMS
SMALL POEM
The closest thing I have to a heritage
is a photograph of my grandmother
being fake-arrested in a fake saloon
in Arizona. Two cowboy actors aim
plastic pistols at her. She’s laughing in the photo, my grandmother,
in cowboy boots and a 10-gallon hat,
her face thrown back to the rafters.
continue reading SMALL POEMVICTORIA SOTO
In the poem I show to no one, a young teacher hides
her students from a gunman, lifts
them into cupboards—her hands smoothing
their hair, closing cupboard doors. Thousands of miles
away, snow falls on a small northern town
where I write, Twenty children fell as snow. The light
turned less familiar as it reflected
off their bodies. I’ve never been to Connecticut,
but I imagine a town hall filled with photo albums,
THE POWER OF LOVE
In Bloemfontein, South Africa
where I was speaking
at an arts festival,
sixteen thousand kilometres away
from the town I grew up in,
I heard a band covering
The Power of Love.
Between events I was wandering
through an outdoor market
looking for souvenirs
when the first bars rang out
like a long distance phone call.
I sat down on a rectangle
of grass and ate shawarma.
A man who resembled…
WINNING
One summer, my father and I ate
through dozens of boxes of popsicles
so that he could construct a catapult
for a town competition. Our mouths went blue
orange, purple, red with his hunger to win
He loved that brief epoch you could peel
the plastic out of bottle caps and get something…
continue reading WINNINGPOLYP
Since his diagnosis, my father-in-law thinks
everyone has nasal polyps. His daughters. His dog.
His phlegmy priest. And now me.
At the dinner table, he angles his soup spoon
for a view, then volunteers to teach me the waltz
just so he can tip me way back. Polyp:
a rogue growth. Cellular excess. A flesh curdle—
akin to the spider I found crumpled…
COHO
Whenever I’m sad, I lift my fish book
off the shelf and let it fall open in my lap.
Today I got coho. I would have liked an eel
or even a smelt, but I only get one flip.
DUNK TANK
It’s you again, with your purple hair
and black sweater with rainbow cuffs.
You know three songs on the guitar
and feel smarter than anyone. Years
later you’ll learn, but for now you’re
brilliant and it’s Messapaloza--
FOR PLAY
1
This is a game for girls: putting a hat
on the cat, putting pants on
the cat, drawing a turkey by tracing
her hand. Little girls like cats
2
A dress is a game with armholes.
A dress is played with a waistband.
A waistband is a game with a firm…
MAY CONTAIN TRACES
In grade three I was jealous of the boy
who had an EpiPen, Aaron. With it,
he could survive peanuts. Like a videogame
egg it was hidden elsewhere to be uncovered
during moments of kingdom crisis…
LONG AFTER I’VE STOPPED MAKING SENSE
Outside my window, seagulls and crows continue
the discourse on language, insisting it need not be beautiful
to be song. If song accompanies their shallow black…
FOR YOUR SAFETY PLEASE HOLD ON
Another forty minutes in a stranger’s armpit,
oh boy. How do you like avoiding eye contact
with me, sir in neon windbreaker??
Let’s stare at the logos mass embroidered
into each other’s outerwear, listening…
DEATH STARRING WINONA RYDER
Her eyes are the three faces of Cerberus.
The third hides behind her shocked bangs.
No, the third is her pursed mouth. If you zoom…
DRUNK UNCLE
Funny bone of every family. Wears
the same old skull T-shirts for thirty years
to unnerve his mother. Grunts his monosyllabic
moniker—Bob, Tom or Lou—at whomever
he’s introduced to. Go ahead, he winks. Pull…
VORTEX FLUID DEVICE
In California, chemists are unboiling eggs
to cure children and vaccinate cancer.
I am unwriting poems, letter by letter
to cure sentimentality because Benjamin
quit writing and what is any of us
doing if he’s not out there ghosting
the language? What an awful way…
GIRL LIKE
A girl like you once sold her period panties
on the internet for eighty dollars plus shipping.
She quit the swim team to sleep more.
She thought she was the only girl to be softly
devastated on the back of a motorcycle, breathing…
LIVEJOURNAL.COM/LONELYRADIO
We could read your words from anywhere
but you felt like the only soul sitting
in your swivel chair listening to your parents…
GONE IS THE VHS. GONE IS THE WHIR.
Gone are the days of dawdling
alphabetically through Blockbuster
pretending to be cool in proximity
to our parents, hot and awkward
in our jackets, hiding ratings…
FALSE NOON ON HIGHWAY 16
The black X on the calendar meant
your dad wasn’t coming home
that night, would inhale aluminum
filaments at the smelter to finance
your future. Funny how he had
a better view on your future than you
POEM FOR JEFF
The Korean shopkeepers are fucked. The students reading
by the dim light of their textbooks are fucked. The couple
fucking on a kitchen table in a loft on 3rd Avenue is fucked.
The hipsters, plastered in wallpaper pants…
POETRY SHORTAGE
Rain again, blurring the world beyond the window.
Days slip off as I sit at my desk, vague
segments, named to give them shape—to say…
continue reading POETRY SHORTAGEINVENTORY
Sometimes the bartenders fill shot glasses
until the liquid bubbles above the rim
and it’s impossible lift them without dripping.
I deliver these shots without telling my tables…
BIBLIOPHILIA
I am very avant-garde in what
I use for bookmarks. That
look on your face would do.
A clump of my hair
in a pinch. At sixteen I dumped…
THOUGH YOU’LL NEVER ADMIT IT
Sometimes a man asks you to marry him
because he wants to keep your body
where he can see it. You were eighteen, newly…
continue reading THOUGH YOU’LL NEVER ADMIT ITFINNISH SCHOOLING
I texted you, “Finnish
Schooling,” and I’m sorry
if you took it as a command.
You’ve been out
of school for years…
ORBIT
I asked Zaq to show me where we are in the milky swirl. Here, he said, pointing to something
nebulous on his screen, and it felt like searching a first-trimester ultrasound