I remember you wakened to a scratch on the roof under your window: a raccoon dismayed at its own arrival couldn’t figure how to disentangle itself from the wide, deep intrusion of space where no limb or branch, not even a lisp of leaves overhangs to grab hold of, no fire escape antenna, gutter, downspout, nothing but to stand alone,… Read more →
The house was waiting sullen without you Like a child that doesn’t exactly know why. Your sunroom says I need a good scrubbing Self-conscious, and forever never good enough. I am watching the shadows weave and bob Against the mantle of trees that dwarf us all Vanilla bark against the old dark film and You underneath it all, naked and… Read more →
Steal a lipstick virginity & tighten the corset of reindeer ribs around your egg-sac lungs Fasten the guillotine garter upon your graceful, muscley thigh & watch his face ignite at the sight of something more to remove Fill a claw-foot with iodine tears & lemon milk & feel your scapula contract & expel as his chest inflates behind you Drink… Read more →
We drove around all day in search of something baked. We drove around all day to drop something off that we would miss to the point of sickness. We drove around all day if only to neglect the sunset. Meanwhile, inside the hill, a mall of cadavers calls us silly for thinking it wouldn’t come— the end of things, the… Read more →
I have seen the silhouettes that bring me heavens, I have seen my torso, in hours of torn, ripple laden with captivity, rent with cries and the sky’s white sheet drying in the wind, weeping, a splash of oceans gone by, reeds, and rains reciting an archery of wounds. The twinned nights. In one I cry, in one I… Read more →
Black-lemon orbs floating on the canvas, clouds suggesting nothing, the way this man on the corner returns a cigarette to his lips before entering the diner, and a bus speeds past in billowing smoke. Or maybe the stars are translations. Lines caper and fall: blue stethoscope tubing, moon within a moon. Valley, steeple, houses: here even trees and shrubs are… Read more →
Faith is something I hold in the reliquary of my mouth, rolling it with my tongue, mindful of its potsherd frailty, certain instead of concrete memories of the bear, vivid despite the space of years nested away like field mice within the ossature of time, or rather what was a bear but now hung flensed and naked beneath the pale… Read more →
Appear through the window atop a ridge painted with glass like stars twice their size others live in differing sounds. The trees shake, heavy and bearable releasing all their frugal light green leaves blotted with ovary ashes resting upon pale faces. The wall is a home of stars.
This is about how our father dealt with a chicken-killing dog. No way could she hide from him. He saw red feathers dangling from her black lips and found the plump body stashed behind the woodpile. He whistled, Some enchanted evening, you will meet a stranger, while uncoiling the twine, and with infinite gentleness, he tied the limp hen around… Read more →
My mother didn’t go outside for a year. Under the wide ceiling sky, each step was a climb up Mt. Everest. The bag on her walker carried all travel necessities: phone, pouch of unscented tissues, lipstick, maybe a bottle of water. Unlike me and unlike earlier, she didn’t hanker for the street or its tributaries. Sometimes a hint of longing… Read more →