Braided Way Magazine

Northern light filled the Gilded Age Harlem apartment I grew up in, perfect light for painters, and because it was the 1950s, our walls were filled with my mother’s beloved prints of Impressionist paintings. I see now what a wonderful stage setting that place was for art: high ceilings; French doors between the living room and dining room that let in m...

When I held him he was small—
somewhere between the size
of a cell and a baobab tree—
and I was myself gigantic
as the atmosphere of a mid-sized
planet covered in water and lava.

He needed protection
for nine months or 900 years.
So I was told by my ancestors,
who are older even than I and who
hav...

Butterflies flit about the citrus trees a few feet above the damp earth, and I feel
it was all done in love by the gardener from Chiapas who works here now.

When I hear him say bicho instead of lombriz, I think of Diego, the priest I knew
and once loved, who was abducted under cover of night...

–for Alasdair

The small boy leans in nose to caterpillar
which munches the frond of a fennel plant
vivid green yellow spots black and pale white
transverse bands But the boy needs more
and touches it there in its final days
of perfect prose eating molting ready
to pupate In its green-brown...

Outer values spin off me like dust devils. I’ve chased them, lost them, rebuilt them, and watched them scatter again. They mostly show up as slogans on coffee mugs.

Plans? They die the moment they’re spoken. The world shifts while you’re still drawing the map. By the time you finish, someone’s already selling your map ...