"Code names are dropped when Uma sidesteps toys / and politely rings the doorbell of a Sacramento / suburban house, compact and green as the grass."

"I passenger princess all over
this bitch of a country."

"These oblong, insistent glories. A bouquet for every occasion. Every snack, morsel and meal."

"The poem that is ‘worm’ began sometime in July 2023 with one of us at home (Jayant, in India) and the other (Lauren) in a café in Indonesia. Each of us was in a chair with a notebook and a laptop."

"my purpose is breath 
for i am made of light
the life i desire, inevitable"

"a baby is born, then stored in cool dark
trucks, delivered by macho drivers
seeking familiarity, men from a simple seed."

"So, I wanted to take this chance to ask you: what is the role of desire within the book? Does the shape of desire shift depending on who or what desires?"

"nostrils catch // scent of  / of mother’s milk—"

"At one point, she even reared up and double / pawed it, her youth half-restored. Addie’s strong and quick, but / digging a hole large enough to fit a 75-pound pup is hard work,

"A lover who knows nothing about balance

(not saying I do) 

tells me this fucks 

with the hair’s pH."

"Bisquick (faced with the Herculean task of creating a road trip playlist / for the speaker and Ghost Cowboy) begins it, like all his personalized playlists / with The Cranberries “Linger.” 28 versions."

"My ex-girlfriend used to call me 'Taco' because I love tacos so much. Probably more / than I loved her."

"I still don’t smell flowers I want to worship with, out of habit."

"I Google what it means to dream about rotting fruit. / Bones becoming pulp. Decomposition. I refine my search // as the doctor rolls toward me."

"until I understood what was missing was not specifically / desire, or love, which were both absent, but only side effects / of what my body really missed..."

“From its first poem, “Heredity,” the book [Nocturne in Joy] shapes its foundations in a lineage of hurt, one that shapes the boundaries and interworkings of family, alongside the boundaries and interworkings of community.”

“It was May. Yew hedges reached with chartreuse fingers / and lilacs spun gauze shrouds.”

“These poems take/borrow/steal/repurpose words, phrases, sentences, images, ideas, etc. from The Diaries of Lord Lugard, Volume Four as well as the personal journal I kept in 2018, during my residency at MacDowell (previously MacDowell Colony).“

“When my Ajji feeds you / a piece of goat liver, hold it there, / between your perfect teeth...”

"I take every inch of you: your little ribbon finger.  / The full moon in your palms. Clavicle  / to cut my teeth on. I smile as I do it."

“i call my cat a friend. the app / on my phone that claims to / translate his sounds says he / is saying Hello!”

“I pick the cucumber and make sunomono, / the smell of fresh ground sesame seeds fills / the room, add wakame for a taste of the ocean / and a squeeze of lemon, just the way you taught me.”

“I wanted the idea that God is in all of us to play out in these stories. That God is all around us and she might be drinking bourbon and frying bacon. She might be taking a friend to get an abortion. She might be wearing white and leading a ceremony. She might be reading an interview. ☺”

“He had the right face, the right stale / sounds crowning his molars.”

“finding the small green pools / in which it was possible— / by looking into them— / to really be alone.”

“It’s in the dorm bathroom, your hair / strewn about the yellow tile, my hands / still tingling from the buzzer, that I am / warmest.”

“«Don’t hurt me,» the whip scorpion begs. «There’s a waning crescent, and rain, and your sheets looked secure.“