beginning with a line by Barbara RasAt first all they want is watermelonand thread, the wet pulp they spit behind them leaving a red trail through the sedges,the seeds they sew into black ball gowns rattling behind them in a shimmering wake.Then they clamor for more:angostura clippings, pallets of bee balm, cocktail umbrellas of eelskin …
What do I know for sure? Only this sliding along the same uneven plane, passing the same few stations, the revolving door of people.The polyurethane seats are dizzying and bright, the colors of cafeteria condiments, the poles covered in the fingerprints of passengers long departed. With a whoosh, the train isextruded into the station like …
After he left, I found it difficultto focus on any one task. I bathedat noon, drove to the community pool only to turn back, knelt in thefenced-in garden to weed but pulled up only roots.In the bathroom, I spun a Q-tipuntil my ear bled. When the children quizzed me on state capitals, I confused Boise …
When I think x, I say y, increasingly. As in, thinking tables, actuarial,how long will I live, how much money for long-term care (oh god),instead, I say water lilies.Pond, sunlight, glint.Or when I think of perp, unknown, more precisely, the one who last night bought diamonds at the mallwith my credit card—instead of fuck you,I …
Too many poems, too many moons now. Too many rivers and stars, too much light and night. Delete grief. Take away love, regret, and boozy fathers. Erase aged hands. Delete all that seems and keep the white chickens. Add an hour of daylight savings— in it, disallow silence, singing. Add scarlet mushrooms, the color of …
“It is a joy to be hidden but disaster not to be found.” —D. W. Winnicott I have always loved the geometry of ships, their bowsprits and their brails, their trestletrees and jibbooms. Walking along the harbor,I admire the long lines of the mizzenmasts, the angled elegance of sails.I have always believed in geometry as …
I sometimes confuse the kanji for everyone with the kanji for floor—as in third-floor balcony. One kanji is the right-hand piece of the other, minus the left piece called the radical, the way other is found in mother, which is also rather radical.“Is floor a part of everyone, or vice versa?” I ask my husband, …
grief in the legs & so the legs like mothers& so our mothers’ bodieslaid openfor everyone to take & thumb & read while we swirl wine like lightto rememberchoking on fruit forgettingin circles a kind of breaking that nightbled onto my skirt & lost its starry insides in your hairits diaphragm grew quiet on our …
A country lying wide open. A country oriented in the original way, toward God. It is like this: all of it, a prosthetic sadness. Wanting to say the thing with bare hands. Morning, held me in her teeth.Morning, her mouth sown with light. Woman, I find myself recounting what I am owed. Woman, I find …
Not the storm, but moments before: I breathed into your shoulder, the sore part of your arm. At the shore, you read me the essay you wrote,the one about me. In it, we fuck, but only I come. Any edits, you asked? Only one. We sat in abandoned tires, thinking. The moon lip-synched across the …