They’ve gotten my classes crisscrossed
sulking here swallowing the wrong,
compacted in the regular classroom.
I belong
in a seat that calls my name
not here in this kingdom of knights
whose eyes eat me when my mouth spills out the wrong answer.
Test questions roar like a lion protecting their kill
and I know my mind better than school does.
Who owns the hands that placed me here?
Lean into my drift, my daze in class
I hum a moth’s melody …
Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen
(Johannes Brahms, Deutsches Requiem/Psalm 84)
I
Keusch bewahrt,/ In bescheidener Knospe: In downstairs Berlin bars she meets young men
while machines rip the city’s …
Just gravity pulling what free
bodies it touches down, and at times
their refusal. Despite this shaking over
the mouth of the trash, a plate
holding its residue. Adherence the …
with borrowings from Rimbaud, “Après le Déluge”
in a turbulent dream,
I wake troubled, confused,
a tabby nosing round the sheets…
the market stalls are dressed in meat,
bavetted, boned, …
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