Friday, July 29, 2011

Two Poems

Apparently leaving Chicago has been the most fruitful inspiration I've felt in two years. I am so grateful to this city for facilitating so much positive change in me, for beating me up and nurturing me. I am truly ready to say goodbye, with a few sighs.

The Nature of Punctuation
From this bridge-
North-
looking Southeast,
the Sears Tower
(Willis Tower)
and the John Hancock
(Tower?)
form bookends of the
city
(Trump purposefully mis-shelved).
A mallard bobs her head
in time
to the riverside weeds.



On Leaving Chicago
I want to write about
diaspora,
and the feeling of inner-emigration.
Privately, I leave these
poems for Elijah at my dinner table,
filling the cracks in Walls with
tiny filaments of paper.

Instead,
I write of the
lush cornfields of Ann Arbor
and the feeling of
coming home.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Yoga July 2011

In the heat
my body becomes
a traveled terrain.
Streams swell from
hidden underground
waterways carving
the crease where
hip makes way
to ribcage.

The other bodies
orb around me,
pulsing with the
swampiness of
new life.

In the end I tuck
and roll my mat,
like seaweed over
sticky rice-
a sure sign
of civilization.