The year your mother drowned your father claims she became a porpoise. He would drive you to the beach where you’d both try and spot her. “They’re hardly ever visible here,” he’d say, binoculars swinging from his neck. You remember the day it snowed on the Pacifica beach when you were four years old. Flakes melted the second they hit… Read more →
I must stop contacting her. She stopped contacting me. You couldn’t hear a pin drop. I think it was the love factor. When you discuss your soul, it always sidetracks you from your nous. You say, well, if only I hadn’t broken up with her 3 months ago. If only her boyfriend hadn’t broken up with her 18 years ago…. Read more →
Stumbling Among Stars Of a despairing world How sweetly and quickly your heart beat.That, I remember. But snowwas already coming from the Dniprosticking to our eyes and glasses,wrapping parks and boulevards with the smell of rumpled wet fur. Let’s walk together, you and I. It’s snowing in Kyiv and Lviv.It’s raining in Lima and Paris.So much that at this late hour we can… Read more →
No love is happiness, especially like this:a face clamped in a handful, lifted upto an impatient, grinning mouth.Maybe you, too, want to avoid the tip of a knife—only the meek, sacrificial, avian soulcan give steel molecules a taste of sweet blood. Every love is unhappiness, especially mine:it stands near the bed like a small half-wit,looking tenderly, asking for harmless comfort.Yet… Read more →
This morning I awoke in gratitudeactually said aloud, Thank you, Ambien, Mom, Dad,and God (just in case), my husband already stretchingand exercising after checking for limp tailed prostratemounds of fur in the traps he’d set the night beforeand takes to a place I only imagine. The sad scatterof tiny skeletons. I will let mice scurry on the floorsand in drawers… Read more →
Let me fear on the body of spider. Not the spirit of them, not the essence, just obscene roundness,haired. Unable to usher them out, I settle to invite them in, letting wilted bodies decompose~window side, corner wood and ledge, multitudes gather. I think This is the end of times, my child’s small form pressed against mine in the corner of… Read more →
she’s never here without the dog,only excuse for escape walk the dog.out the door she marvels that sucha home as hers would have a dog. she thanks the dog, spelling it backwardsand frontwards. she thinks stifling house,she means house on fire. dog digs upthe wrung wings of a water bird, tangled in shad tails. beneath them,a beaked skull, giftwrapped in… Read more →
You ask to walk the cedar-green path behind your house to feel the needles of cool air pricking your cheeks one more time I trail you watching and ready you fall backwards as if melting your forearms sink against mine until we are elbow-in-elbow I step into you and slip my feet under yours soles curve over arches toes over toes in this manner we turn and pick… Read more →
It takes me a minute to figure out who she is. Not much context in the neighborhood Peet’s Coffee and Tea. She’s a parent of one of the kid’s friends, that much I know. A positive association. The barista shouts a name. It’s her mocha latte, flat, no whip. Sarah Something—from a soccer family. Is she still an… Read more →