New People by Danzy Senna, Riverhead Books, 240 pp.

AFTER CHARL LANDVREUGD, MOVT NR. 8: THE QUALITY OF 21 Dream of rooms, forgetting, how to see. As silent as paintings. Space, in which We build houses. For all of us to be. Camera of thought, as if remembering. Tomorrow’s colony naked and faint. His moon is behind me, changing. Come true. Behold our solid  Continue Reading »

Ghazals Upon Returning to Hispañiola 1. It was diaspora or death: the oligarchs took everything, the Americans gawked. To think that a small place could fit so much hate; so we left. Carter helped, and for twenty years of Sunday’s the east river was tinfoil our mothers tried to smooth out, the towers on Broadway  Continue Reading »

FLORIDA I look out my window to the sea. For fifteen years I’ve wanted an ocean view, and now I finally have one. But on stormy days the white waves seem to crash too close to my window. Everyone agrees South Florida is sinking, the limestone below so porous not even a seawall can save  Continue Reading »