Children

Gazing at the sky, all cloud-strewn
A child wonders, Where’s my moon?

Child cries a river like a monsoon…

1 berry-stained month of summer
1 grandmother
2 cups flour
½ cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
½…

Something will change every day.
I moved six times. I felt like I was traveling.
But something will …

I saw thousands of pumpkins last night
come floating in on the tide,
bumping up against the rocks and
rolling…

I don’t like similes.Every time I try to think of onemy brain feels like a vast, empty desert;my eyes…

Hush thee and sleep, little one, 
     The feathers on thy board sway to and fro; 
The shadows reach far downward…

make
this world
a whole lot
brighter

when
I
grow up
I'll
be
a writer.
I'll
write about
some things
I know—

                    how to bunt
                    how to throw . . .

           ...

The mountain and the squirrel  
Had a quarrel;  
And the former called the latter ‘Little Prig.’
Bun replied,  
‘You are doubtless very big;         
But all sorts of things and weather  
Must be taken in together,  
To make up a year  
And a sphere.  
And I think it no disgrace  
To...

I always like summer
best
you can eat fresh corn
from daddy's garden
and okra...

For someone to read a poem
again, and again, and then,

having lifted it from page
to brain—the easy part—

cradle it on the longer trek
from brain all the way to heart.

My sister found them.
 
Read them out loud.
She’s so proud,
 
she’s running to our parents
waving my poems in the air.
 
Doesn’t she know 
she’s waving my underwear?

The best clouds in the business
          are right above me
right now.

We’re riding in this teal convertible
          those clouds just dozing
          in about forty-nine different shapes
       ...

When my dad walks
into a room,
or down
the street,
he inches
up on me
silent
as shadow,...

Up till now,
the math of my life
has been pretty simple:
friends
plus family
plus sports.
What more
could I ask for, right?
But lately,
my outside has been changing
and my inside keeps telling me
more is on the way.
Trouble is,
I'm not sure
I'm ready.

Think
how many long years
this tree waited as a seed
for an animal or bird or wind or rain
to maybe carry it to maybe the right spot
where again it waited months for seasons to change
until time and temperature were fine enough to...

They ignored the new boy,
snickering behind his back.

                                                    In silence, I stayed     safe.
   ...

Imagine the lunchroom,
crowded and wary—
seating charts a welcome apprehension.

Loose-leaf
papers spiraled from
ballpoint-scratched notebook covers
until the last hour,
when a teacher
sighed and sighed.

Today, we close our backpacks,
but minutes
come quick and quit
the ease of dawn.

My body is
perfect and
imperfect and
black and
girl and
big and
thick hair and
short legs and
scraped knee and
healed scar and
heart beating and
hands that hold and
voice that bellows and
feet that dance and
arms that embrace and
my momma’s eyes and
my daddy’s smile and
my grandma’s hope and

my body...