I’ll bite / the feeding hand until I’m fed / and buried.
We have reached the part of the US political cycle where presidential candidates start dropping out, but the books are still banned. We have reached the part...
They don’t appear to understand that . . . / If only they would make an effort
Someone I respect gave something up, something meaningful that mattered to them, did so quietly. Someone I have no public opinions about gave something up,...
fa / ll / s) /
I have been reading about colour, and about texture, and about shape. There are more elements in the formal canon, but these three (and absence, space,...
Here’s tae us. Promises / made to be broken, made to last.
There have been many rituals. In Trinidad, pig foot souse at midnight; scotch and coconut water; the kinds of friends you make once, if you’re lucky. In...
we make / our own magic
It’s all so messy – pine needles, tinsel, glass balls shattered, peace on earth Dark waiting: we make our own magic — Two Haiku for Advent by Kelly Belmont...
we all become curious
I am often thinking about BuzzFeed, about how it published poets and essayists, about how the reporters and editors there would review and recommend and in...
this deletion is / temporary.
It’s raining in New York, and it’s making the kind of steady, reassuring patter that you tell yourself sounds like night rain back home, that version of home...
We have to cross / the river and my strength fails me.
In another job, in another time, when I had to be thinking through a policy around bereavement leave, I was reminded of - indeed, once again confronted by -...
circle without end and without God. /
The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters and the diameter of its effective range — about seven meters. And in it four dead and eleven wounded. And...
How frugal is the Chariot That bears the Human Soul
When I was growing up, many of the books that were available to me — what would now be called “Middle Grade” — were books by Enid Blyton. I read them all:...
as in a relay race: / the baton never falls
Not the peace of a cease-fire, not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb, but rather as in the heart when the excitement is over and you can talk only...
The grieving have only the unknown.
I know I’m stressed about everything going on because I am considering a new hobby that I absolutely do not have time for. So instead I have watched several...
Everything is symbolic in / literature.
In Trinidad, for the first time since January 2020. On a work call—this was a “working holiday”, as are they all, aren’t they—and I hear the accent of home,...
Speak this because I exist.
There is an exercise I practice, or try to. It begins, what is the most useful thing I can be doing right now? It continues, to whom can I be useful (because...
make way for / those who know little.
After every warsomeone has to clean up.Things won’tstraighten themselves up, after all.Someone has to push the rubbleto the side of the road,so the corpse-...
protested / but not enough
War, again. Or perhaps, still. Or indeed, always. Attribution And when they bombed other people’s houses, we protested but not enough, we opposed them but...
October is / when night guzzles up/ the orange sherbet sunset
Every third conversation, oh yeah, they couldn’t come because they have Covid. Nonchalant, but not immune. Schedule the no-longer-called-boosters; stay...
There is an autumn sadness upon me, / A dreamfulness in my heart,
A changing of the seasons. Wistful is how I feel about autumn, a season I didn’t experience for the first eighteen or so years of my life. Funny how quickly...
Is it possible my function is to hold / All the intricate, interstitial pain
Congratulations to all those on the National Book Awards Longlists, and especially to Charif Shanahan and all the poets. Attribution: Specks of toothpaste...
Fortune's expensive smile / Is earned
Sometimes, when you are on the nine hour flight that followed the five hour drive that started at 5.30am, and the seat next to yours is occupied by a very...