poetry

  She slept with the bear to relieve herself of the burden of purity to travel the world alone with only a backpack.   Apple trees lit up with ten thousand sun-filled blossoms.   She winced when he pinched her … Read More

  —after Aimee Mann   I can still feel the ricochet of myself at sixteen, the windows cracked and gone down the years.   There’s no warning. I was already gathering velocity when I arrived and my trajectory is only … Read More

  Here, there is a great big willow that gives its shade in the summer. Wilted little leaves tumble into my lap. I bury the dry bodies of ants. I introduce dirt under my fingernails. In this world, I have … Read More

  What does it mean to leave a colony? A penguin is heading toward the mountains, directionless, slow and strange. Pearlwort smashed under heavy snow, he follows the grey light of winter. After some tomorrow comes the mountain. After the … Read More

  We may not have learned what a verb was but we learned what a noncount noun was. We may have forgotten what a noncount noun was but we learned what a transitive verb was.   I may have given … Read More

  Our directions said take exit 31 or 33 so we of course took 32 and drove off the map into thin gray roads, slanting drizzle, pairs of Rottweilers guarding driveways from our turnarounds until we reach it, a small … Read More

  In Cambridge, I bought a Passport to the Moon, with a large map from 1679 drawn by Giandomenico Cassini, & issued by the Lunar Ministry of Solar System & Interstellar Travel. There is a place to paste my photo, … Read More

  The calcified doors open like shells as I open my eyes and remember you The shells of my lungs open with speech in the palindrome of memory   The shriek like a bird, like a cat, was you Water … Read More

  “Silver seems to dominate in the Carolinian dream, when it is, of all such dreams, the one least likely to be realized.” —Popular Science, 1892   Silver does dominate my Carolinian dream—recalling granite run with metallic seams, creek beds … Read More

  Prospectors may appraise an entire mountain range and identify only the absence of a single ore.   But if just mica and corundum crumbs are found, if the profits are insubstantial, the operations small, mines can be less   … Read More

  The old men chide each other to tee up quick, before the rain. I want to buy a fountain soda, sit on the porch, and eavesdrop. I want to buy a pitcher of beer. I walk the mini-green, swoops … Read More

  lord, grant us the shelter of strangers where no one needs us to be animute, invisociable as an old retriever   give us room to braid our three halves into a horse’s tail, lord, let it be a draft … Read More