Once I walked
through a forest.
It was high
in the mountains.
The air was clear and thin.
The stars shone brightly,
the outline of the forest canopy in sharp relief
like the background
to a stop-motion silhouette fairy tale.

Now is my turn to speak, if I
can claim it, tipping myself forward,
letting my tongue fall with a soft,
an inward, an almost inaudible click.

It is desirable that as little happen as possible.
An aristocrat said this, knowing (I hope) it was hopeless.
Inevitably,
sporadically (like clockwork,
unlike clockwork), something
goes thlunk into the pond of you,
and the normal expires.

    These days I wake in the used light of someone’s spent life.
     I am often a stranger to myself;
       I have no place of origin, no home.

for Harry Mphanza

We have changed a great many of our colonial place names since independence, but we have kept the name of Livingstone out of a deep respect. —Siloka Mukuni, chief of the Leya People

  At the onset of my ingenious plan, the sun barely shone
            through the mist.
      I struggled with a name to identify the rushes
            of water pouring beside me.

an excert from The Ferguson Report: An Erasure

Imagine you at the beginning of the
longest walk of your life, no thought given to
shoes, socks, toothpaste, hats, and the other
rip-rap, nothing of watches or water, sleeping

Guy walks up to me in the park and says, “My girlfriend killed
    James Brown,” and I start to say, “Do I know you?” but
I don’t want to miss out on the story, so I say, “No lie!” and he says,
    “Yeah, I got bumped up to first class, and when I saw who
my seatmate was, I went back to economy and told my girlfriend,
    and even though she had the flu, we switch places, and three

My mother’s been dead for three months.
I don’t know where she is now or how she got there.
I’ve heard all kinds of conjecture, and some
I believe. But firsthand experience comes last.

I understand—the NO ONE CARES billboard
looms over the exit ramp; Nancy has lost her place
in her novel for the umpteenth time; the Lab
has dysplasia.