Any Good Poem

California

"That’s when I started dreaming I could be a doctor someday, that I could get away, prescribe myself a new life."

curry

"But before offering it to us over steamed rice, even before his gods, he’d serve those who were not home..."

motorcycle

Wild

"The year I owned a motorcycle and split the air in southern Spain, and could smell the oranges in the orange groves as I passed them outside of Seville, I understood I'd been riding too long in cars..."

Black mother

"How free is our will if our fate is decided by our melanin. What is the meaning of Black lives when so many people don’t think we matter?"

spring

"Otherwise it's spring, and everything looks frail; the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling leaves are full of infant chlorophyll, the very tint of inexperience."

shirt

"The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters. Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape, the label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt."