all

[Verse One:]

All.

I used

my every attack;

My red match.

Remember,

you never

take

now.

‘Cause sin,

I used to.

Call.

If you don’t

[Chorus]

hold,

I’ll give you

[Verse Two:]

change.

All day.

Keep me.

Miss me.

Play me close like

life without

ears.

I dropped all.

[Verse Three:]

Dead

money handles

one-room.

On her back,

of course.

My face,

no

heat.

Why we thirst?

all...

( all )

don’t

you know

the house

mad?

Aziza meets the nailgun

I don’t know how to wait for rain the way other folks seem to. I open my mouth. Foreclose the light. Scream. I can’t see past where I got hit. I’m not a lock. Not a needle. Just the afterthought of torque. A good wrist and precision. A domesticated violence. I know what I have: the inside of a stain, a shipyard of want. A hand on your name, then off. I design a wound and it’s my best feature. A door, for one. The house blames rust on me. I can’t make anything stay put when all I’m good for is making things stay put. Sometimes, I breathe so fast I become a different thing. What I’m trying to say is: you are not the first. I’ve made my mother cry and couldn’t make it stop.

lullaby for my unborn daughter

begin at the blood/when the house is rotting/

at the red summer/when you were too undone to love/

at the high lyric/ when you got up out of your skin/

at a low moan/when your mother was a long hand held out/

at that small impossible/when air was loud grease/

at your name/when you did everything to stay/

at the red summer/when you got up out your skin/undone

at the blood/when air was that small impossible/hand

at the high lyric/when you became your mother/loud

at your name/when it was a house/rotting

at that small impossible/love/a skin undone

at the blood/when rotting/became air

at the air/that small house

at your too undone/when a hand held out/was impossible

at the blood/when you begin/to love

Addie Parker speaks to Charlie Parker, a mother’s lost advice

Syncopation means

knowing what pocket

to hide your breath

not playing every note

loudly like a man

lost in his own body

a small translation

soy borracho/you’re drunk

sí soy borracho/yes you’re drunk

borracho pero eres linda linda/drunk but you pretty pretty

entiendes?/you understand?

linda!/pretty!

sabes?/you know?

mírame/look at me

please/please

eres linda sabes?/I don’t know

linda!/pretty!

eres linda linda/how to take care of myself

sabes/how to lock up

pero soy borracho/how to shred light simple

se que tu eres linda/how to hold a shrill coil of yes

entiendes?/how to sew without blood

entiendes/I don’t understand

eres linda sabes?/no

linda!/I don’t have anything left to give you

sabes?/you know?

mírame/see this, all spoiled

soy borracho/you hear?

borracho pero eres/what you want

linda!/tastes better

mírame/silent

at what/hits stop

At 9pm off the Utica stop, you can see a playground gone ghost. A car flooded with soca and an old woman yelling into her Bluetooth at an old man yelling into his Blackberry.