Phrase used by Whites to express their surprise and disapproval of social or political conditions which, to the Negro, are devastatingly usual. Often accompanied by an unsolicited touch on the forearm or shoulder, this ­expression is a favorite among the most politically liberal but socially comfortable of Whites. 

A single pant leg dangles from the chair. 
Mud from the hem leaves graves on the floor.
Crescent moon: the last button 

May you sleep the most famous sleep: the night kind, one-third-of-your-whole-life-like, and if you panic in the peace, you are not dying. Breathing but not doing is not dying. 

Animals aren’t afraid the way we are. They don’t imagine danger. If danger comes, an animal becomes more alive, using its stored-up more-animal-self reserves. If the danger is fatal, it becomes the most alive it’s ever been, using up its entire being in those last moments. 

You never understood me until you watched me wash the inside of the well, with clean well water and invisible soap that dissolves the dirt and then clumps up and floats on the surface, suddenly iridescent. 

I lived in a rooming house then 
and tried to be good but was a real 
disappointment. A man without cunning 

When equality feels like oppression
To you, the keyboard a sword and cannon
And the comfort of being everyone

In the hospital waiting room, seated in my plastic chair,
I think about Leonard Cohen and start quietly to cry.
I’m glad no one is watching, because I can see

The Impressionism wing strikes me as too
dainty for my mood, except for one oil painting
by Gustave Caillebotte, Calf’s Head and Ox Tongue,

The masters are yet dead. Wanting to be human, 
I tried to rewrite The Waste Land. The canon’s reach
casts ruinous light. The masters’ pens breach