June 2004, Becoming Anthology.
2002 Urmy-Hardy Prize for best poem by an undergraduate at Stanford University.
Volume 5, Issue 1 (Spring 2002), Masque Magazine.

Powell Street, December Twenty-Seventh

In between Corpus Christi and BART
a shoddy saxophone on the corner
pulls gold teeth away from moist reed
mid-song to shout at her
that she could "almost pass for a boy,
just a few more of them fucking
hormone shots and—" She recalls
that Augustine pondered how one
could remember forgetfulness;
around her: two solid blocks
of one voice and eyes and eyes
mercifully blurring to the texture
of a Chinese pear. Four years earlier
a man had prepared her for these moments:
how to write poems, love Faulkner,
and play her favorite song
over and over, closer and closer to fine.
Of course Augustine was searching for God,
the saxophone for a quarter or
a greater sin to absolve him, but
was Mathew Shepherd Jesus Christ
or was Jesus Christ Mathew Shepherd?
Rhythm of her train:
Yoknapatawpha, Yoknapatawpha;
as the lights of the tunnel
passing her under the bay
shout green at steady increments,
She tries not to yearn for another sound,
one she has forgotten
though remembers hearing:
the fly crying behind her headboard
late at night as a child,
a fly crying behind a Great Wall.