Poetry

cancer poem #1

5 good hrs w/steroids&oxy in the land of headless people with faces on their chests—comatose explorers thinking theirs are best to lead the way to futures traded for avocado toast & art dispensed from automats mosquito killer sprayed on babies fog & fruit all full of maggots lab-created mechanical maggots cells regenerate in these maggots * * * 2am &… Read more →

cancer poem #2

a snail carries its house on its back & on its back are all our houses— it’s snails all the way down i thought it was turtles said someone no—that’s only in anecdotes we’re living the endtime condors & cormorants have birdhood in common california & eldorado have gold it’s the presence of eyes that perceives but the absence of… Read more →

Holding Pattern

something leans in the night and bends it something reaches into the space but doesn’t quite speak the sleeping bees in their drowsy the sleeping trees if they sleep, and down the road my neighbor dreams a new forest one two three four, now we tumble out the door the sky crackles and the dry ground thumps like a drum… Read more →

Mottephobia Hollywood

A producer asks you to pose naked lying on a block of ice. A pantry moth flies into the trap of glue and pheromones. It’s you and a veteran and there’s sexual tension because you’re a girl and he’s a guy. Do you have the right sound equipment to flirt? When you go to sleep, pantry moths lay eggs on… Read more →

The Train

It was little and it was fast and it was nothing. In the heavy dark my neck was a fencepost stringing barbed apologies between my body and everyone else’s. Obscure lessons, whispered the man in the hurricane. How bitter the winds were, how they peeled me from my skin. How I wanted to be fast and small and nothing at… Read more →

to turn back to the world

today— false brome today— was a rookie on the force today— himalayan blackberry, invasive, the non-native one today— didn’t pose a threat today— perennial lupine today— “objectionably reasonable” today— wild strawberry wrentit nuptials today— mistook her handgun for a taser today— yellow glandweed, skipper butterfly atop tufts of melic today, unrest, racial today— wild radish today— dijon kizzee sticky monkeyflower… Read more →

Dear Reader,

I’m trying to be sure for both of us why you’re here instead of in a movie theater with a fake night sky or a bowling alley with neon fake night sky this fake sky has two moons made of dryer lint I’m sorry about that their dust rains down sometimes onto you sometimes onto the head of a squirrel… Read more →

Field Notes: Worcester County, August

Drought. Air wet, thick and useless. Heat cloisters us: rabbit-like, we become crepuscular in our habits. Drought. Three hours before sunset, black-bodied dragonflies converge low over the lawns, a pattern of sustenance-seeking I cannot read. Drought. Craneflies mate on the window screen, tail to tail. Later their deciduous legs dangle from the lattice, their body-husks fallen into the dead celosia…. Read more →

Earth from Apollo 17

All the clouds seem to rise from the gray deadened south cap. They aren’t a bird, but if they aren’t a bird, they are feathers, the winged clouds, a frozen counter-phoenix blizzarding. The earth a face weather crosses like an expression, glassed in a helmet with O2. Reading that face would be a mistake, like ascribing human motive to a… Read more →