Author Archives: Haley

  New to the body’s private geometries you and I like two young Newtons wondering under your mother’s Gravenstein drew in the dirt bold lines between us you the better artist sketching your detailed you I scratching out my own … Read More

  when people start holding hands and looking. Anything so metal would be not a heart, they’re thinking, but we are a heart!, bumpy and ready for love says our therapist. This machine is healthy we tell ourselves and it … Read More

  In today’s paper they have announced the death of the inventor of the bar-code, a man called Woodland, who drew a line in the sand and saw the future. At first, his runes were printed as a circle like … Read More

  holly and yew and rhododendron do not like the light manners and flippant quips of the larch and birch we do not welcome your double meanings they say, leaving the oak to lean towards his dark singular justice without … Read More

  Along the coast, we lit tobacco fields. We followed a pack of bulldogs. Our private moments, of praying for each other’s bodies, were sought behind billowing tapestries. A barge approached us overflowing with sleepers who held contracts. We took … Read More

  I cannot understand why she cannot understand why the weight of her body intrudes, and then   Wait, I was saying, what was, right, that, the load of her weight, but not just that, more the fact of her … Read More

  I’ve got the portable radio tuned to the news, and they’re singing “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” its clotted lyrics sounding as though each singer in the choir made up different words until they get to “Glory! Glory! Halleluja!” … Read More

  You haven’t spoken to your friends in years. You’ve heard of their occupations. You’ve seen   their family photos. You want to wake up in a salt mine with a tarp over your head. You want to catch up … Read More

  There is no short supply of quiet in London And all the darkness one could ever need Is there around the fair at Christmastime And nearly snuffs it out. I always see The fair, yet miss it, always, riding … Read More

  The downy woodpecker’s pointed knocking persistent as on a grandparent’s back door is nothing like a hammer drill, head slamming forward and on snapping impact retracting a split moment before slamming forth again to wood; then, cocked muzzle aside, … Read More

  Less skin than wrapper, less concrete than gauze, the ground crumbles—floats away, cools, gray-brown dust tornados, magnetic, lost in tides. What does it matter? Broken ground folds into plains and craters, fields mark the path of violence. Scars gather … Read More

  A gusty wind blows snow from the east, from the north then back from the east. The snow is confused, he says, (beat) sometimes we are too. Where better to look for the self than in that snow, wind’s … Read More