I am the author of three collections of poems: Ruin, published by Alice James Books in 2006, The Glimmering Room, published by Four Way Books in 2012, and Wunderkammer, my third collection, was published by Four Way Books in 2014. My fourth collection, How the End Begins, also from Four Way Books, is forthcoming in 2016. My essays and art writings have been published in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The American Poetry Review, Guernica, and The Rumpus. I am also currently at work on two poetry anthologies: one of Latina poets and the other, a collection of poetry by female poets around the issue of consumption and nourishment. I am a regular contributor for the art journal Hyperallergic. I have received fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony as well as a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University. I have an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College in writing and an MFA in Art Criticism & Writing from the School of Visual Arts. In the fall I will be pursuing a PhD in German Studies at Rutgers University. I teach at Sarah Lawrence College and am currently at work on a collection of essays on language and iterations of silence.
GUIDEBOOKS FOR THE DEAD
Now the ghost fears
Have gone.
Just the hemmed-in,
The real
Ones. The pill gown
Pitch of death and her shoddy
Song of sorry.
Nothing, just me
Pressed against the oil-
Smeared gates
Of the world.
GUIDEBOOKS FOR THE DEAD
Oh bright red lamp, oh flame.
Oh leaked mascara
Caked at the bottom
Of my brown leather satchel.
Alone, my only
Friend: feral, an animal,
And the bright red lamp
That leads me.
NATURE MORT
Bathing his godly body
In a white tub of ice.
Damage, and a petrol
Of dead black flowers.
The sweet pollution
Of what God he thought
He took in.
Hustler of the glossy edge,
Bright germ of dreg
Searing its way
Through the blue cathedral
Of his mind.
TIME OF THE WOLF
The wailing of women
Was like a procession of voices.
The orphan took two pieces of wood
And connected them with twine
To form a makeshift cross.
Then we watched as the men with torches
Moved forward on their horses,
Through the night’s black ocean, like ships.
GUIDEBOOKS FOR THE DEAD
I pull the bell on the string at the gate
Then all the demons came.
Where is the coat
God gave me:
Long and mink
And to save me.
Under the blue awning
Of the shelter in the rain.
Beneath the shadow
Of the cathedral.
I’m riding the same train
As my father now.
And how I love
The white hiss of prayer and magic.