Poems

Nursing Internship, LA County, 1990

Rattle / August 27, 2008

As the cancer patients died you smoked Another cigarette down by the dormitory pool, arm Dangling in the airless heat. […]

Rattle / August 26, 2008

Schoolgirls in black skirts and white blouses water flowers that bloom only in the night. One of the girls wears

Rattle / August 25, 2008

In those days you were something felt but not seen as you handed me love letters written in dead languages.

Rattle / August 24, 2008

I know there are certain truths I shouldn’t tell you, and certain lies I should. I shouldn’t tell you that

Rattle / August 21, 2008

In Burke’s Pharmacy on the corner of Six Mile Road, cartoon faces—Fatso, Ratso and Japso—leer from a garish poster next

Rattle / August 20, 2008

The Speculum Oris was a scissor-shaped instrument inserted into the mouth of a slave to force the jaws open. The