poetry

  Snakes in the tall grass, sprinklers ticking the first time he forced my head underwater.   I counted seconds in the blue, planetary flecks on the concrete wall underwater.   He pulled me up, then the game repeated itself. … Read More

  The scavenger coyotes come at hunters’ shots. My father relates these snippets on the drive to a refuge for an afternoon walk.   I notice, on the middle seat of his capped pickup, something black, handheld, metal in the … Read More

The will of the tine shall break the soil into lines of seed   seeds   small as beads of sweat   to roll   & neaten our broken soil                    to rise from plumules   to dicotyl   a simple sequence laid in a … Read More

  All day, blue mustangs of clouds charge from west to east, unfinished bodies over us. Though they aren’t animals,   we are, and see equine jawbones in the vapors, curve after curve billowing, the rise of their necks, their … Read More

  My brain can barely fathom him at all. After the usual kiss, he fades away. But when I wake him he wants me to stay so I do.  He perks up in the dining hall,   among familiar faces … Read More

  Off the path: the demolished hospital’s littered ravine. Single yellow bricks stamped: Standard Steel, West Branch. Broken plates, the bottom of a mug. Jars, jars, jars, like larvae emerging from mud— thaw softened them free—I can see in a … Read More

  now you are darker than I can believe it is not wisdom that I have come to with its denials and pure promises but the absences I cannot set down W.S. Merwin   You were the brittle membrane between … Read More

  The ear is the last face. —Emily Dickinson   Now the owl comes to my sleep, unbidden. I take its call, sculpted and clear, in to the immensity inside me, let it pass   through, a journey not governed … Read More

  Let’s say Heraclitus is right, we can’t swim the same surf twice— the way waves soak into the sand, the patterns left as darker stains that fade when the tide recedes, never repeat though if they did, who would … Read More

  The city warns that coyote have been sighted broaching a few neighbors’ yards. Scat & paw prints found come morning. They must be hungry & desperate,   trembling in the shadows beyond the back porch, which is the way … Read More

  My brand new polydactyl cat uses two extra dewclaws to chase the crumpled pages of mistakes I’ve thrown at the floor. Then he sprays them.   Bored by pleasure, he stretches to the ends of his claws, then claims … Read More

&nbsp Neither of us smiles.   I cradle his body, left arm snug across his back, right arm slung below his legs.   I think I’m holding hours of night, sleepless motherhood, the mistakes of labor.   My thumb rests … Read More