Poetry has no investment in anything besides openness. It's not arguing a point. It's creating an environment.

Because white men can’t police their imaginations, black men are dying.

I want to believe that in any relational moment a person understands that the other person in front of them is just another human being.

You can’t put the past behind you. It’s buried in you; it’s turned your flesh into its own cupboard. Not everything remembered is useful but it all comes from the world to be stored in you.

The past is a life sentence, a blunt instrument aimed at tomorrow.

Define loneliness? Yes. It's what we can't do for each other.

Sometimes the art pieces I gravitate toward speak to me in terms of narrative, at other times they speak to me in terms of mood.

The worst injury is feeling you don't belong so much / to you.

If you admit to being racist, it says you acknowledge that you are being driven by projections and stereotypes that were formed in the creation of our country. Racism is deeply rooted in America.

Where is the safest place when that place / must be someplace other than in the body?

I am invested in keeping present the forgotten bodies.

Anyone's happier when they're not being verbally abused all day long.

Some of us are born big-minded with small penises. Others have big penises and small-minded.

I love to eat - Kit Kats or cookies-and-cream ice cream. I need sugar like five times a day.

It is wisdom to know others. It is enlightenment to know oneself.

It was just a kiss – " "Yeah, and King Kong was just a monkey.

The only thing that never changes is that everything changes.

I don't mind having these relatives. I'll give them a little, since they all prayed for my victory.

And as many of the plates as Joseph Smith translated I handled with my hands, plate after plate.

I'm most proud of my work in the LGBTQ space. Feels like, above all else, that's something I want to do for the rest of my life.