Destroyer

It is the light that annihilates orchids.
In the madness of the light, the violet membranes of butterflies are liquefied.
There is no difference between the light and ourselves.
Sometimes we are also afraid of becoming violent, afraid of throwing ourselves
from a bridge into the ocean to become as white as a crane,
afraid of becoming something that we already are – dark fugitives.
We take refuge in the massive shoulders of the buffalo.
If they search for us tomorrow, they’ll find us in the wounds of the sun,
forging dead lilacs.

A Moon Love Story

In the fourth grade, my mother would kill lice
with her thumbnails.
She would find purpose in their deaths.
My grandmother would sit across from us with a book on her lap,
but she did not know if it was a book of poems or The Bible.

The Great Fall

That morning in San Francisco
your mother broke her forehead on the asphalt
and hummingbirds spilled from it like small hurricanes.