A symphony of freshness.There you are,betweenPippins, Cortlands, Boscs-The usual, dull, fall fare,assembled like a majestic choir,unapologetically singing: “We’re still here.” Cheeky,Yellowy red,Fuzzy,Vine ripened—The last tune of summer I…
What do women who don’t take their coats offdo in the summer when it’s warm?Does Freon flow through their veins?Do they sweat through ice-lined pores? I…
The bird hides inside, tucked inside my ribcage,the feathers hide my heart. You can smell its desperation on me;even through the cigarette smoke and birthday…
A swirling, whirling dervish the sky cannot contain me going every which way Wild-eyed as Van Gogh, no salve for the wounds blue on blue burnt red on beige Calm…
In the wildlife rescue video shared ten million times:the fawn paces at the bottom of a dry well,the ducklings peep in a sewer,the fox hangs…
Life like a crisp packetdropped into a fire,shrinking and crumbling; dyingand not burning; curlingon hot coals. I sip tea in the morning on the kitchen floorand…
Rain pours down, downpour,pouring rain, rainpour, downrain, and I, inside, beneath a dormered ceiling,cloistered from the hammering pellets, percussive symphony of spatterssinging how sheltered you are. A slope…
Blood and flesh and bone,bequeathed to me, I raised you to cleave to other geographies,to leave me sliced open by the distancethat looms between us,…
Every few months, I take a picture of myselfand make it easy to findso they won’t have to look longwhen I die.The struggle against the…
Only a few minutes ago, we were talking through the closet walllike prisoners at a poet conventionor lovers caught in the parking lothaving one last dance…
The cloud gnaws atthe spine of the mountain,cracking the bone to get at the marrow,licking the earth’s juicesdribbling down the chin, soaking shoulders,undercutting the highway,…
The build, this build a painful narcoleptic my dissonance evokes the somber chi that lives in all of us. Remnant memories of my by gone.…
Frame by frame, this game:fast forward, reverse; zoom in, retreatto the panoramic, commentary astute, shrewd,witty, and—my husband points out—spot onwith what I noted (the week…
Easy sigh me Kiss the very blears of my corners Calm my rustlings Hush my eyes Dawn my furrowed nocturnings Easy sigh me Whisper near the crest of my shadows Pause…
This final forest thins out ahead.I can see through the trees nowas the stand diffusesstretching their shadowsleaving only space – a barrenwithout blueberries perhaps. Moss…
does not want attention when she goes into town to shop. She’s hadenough of people’s taunts, their opinions of her looks, her clothes,her lifestyle. Her…
The trail maker — I want to meet her. She swings me ‘round the boles of the bigger beeches, then along a slope with skinny…
Theirs was a marriage of skin conditions, heartbreak and rashes, wrapped in a perilous geography: concrete for her, and his pocked valleys. My mother preferred…
He spilled things: tiny gold necklaces into shag carpet, wine coolers over a plate of snickerdoodles, letters out the edges of the high school yearbook.…
descending down the lonely dark hill snow pouring down from the darkness down in cones cast from the yellow street lights driving carefully down route…
How quickly it transits, an arc of ice tightening from west to east. A rock thrown into black water shivers into the deep, empty belly,…
outside her window, spiderweb branches crawlacross a darkening sky — the cold, wet, whitemakes faces in the glass — the light bulbsemit their white light…
This year, she rememberseveryone—daughter, daughter-in-law,son-in-law, grandchildren—but early,March Hallmarks arriving beforeSeptember’s almost-autumn,age a wish we’d rather wait onbut still welcome with open mail slotswhen her stamped…
Today, the dentist pulledthe last of yournatural teeth andreplaced them withfalse ones. Tomorrow, you will turn eighty-three. I wonder howmuch of usis left — really still…
In three seconds, she/I will no longer remember the inconsistency of this moment, or the mundane thrill on your/our breath. An umbrella, which she/I/we thought…
I harbored the spirit of unforgiveness
she wasn’t the unruly houseguest
everyone supposes
she didn’t destroy furniture
or have people over for orgies
mostly she sat silently
I am the full moon
rich with daughters.
Time spent
reading bedtime stories
and drying tears over
spilled milk and bruised knees.
I am trying to quit thinking of simple human decency as a form of heroism, both in my poems and in the world. …
The room was too quiet, so I left. I took my nervous feet to poundthe dark curl of island parting the river,all drizzling dark and…
Combine water and sugar in a bottle, and place a string inside.Crystals will begin to consume the string,a physical reaction to something sweet.A catalyst in…
This bleak suburb of Chicagothis Best Western hotel this December, freezing rainthese grey scraps of snow these apartments across the waythose small prisons of the…
Yellow beam from my flash and I tell myself something’s not right – as it runs ahead of me across the foyer floor to the kitchen linoleum, plush carpet…
In the mouth& the jawsback-handed slamby the coroner-manbecause of the rigorbecause he was sickof the shelling assemblyall gone to this:My buddy beneath the sheet,Father Priestseminary…
the worst part
is not seeing.
how blood pools post-op
behind the retina…
I. Uncle Skeleton bleached bronze by the desert
rattles up my driveway looking for solace,
someone who might understand…
the cemetery is a grand garden
to walk in she says
all the flowers arranged then changed
stories told by names…
My begging him to seek help—a psychiatrist, medication—is the proof of my cahootswith the omnipotent cabalhacking him, following him,seizing every shot to uncloakan interminable presencein…
The hush of darkness broken. Soft edging breathes gently through the horizon, heaving. Reaching slowly to embrace the Earth with its tendrils. Young greens wake…
How do you know it’s done? I admit the children were wreckedbut the sad man gave me reasons to remain— the sex was sex, his…
He’s been in a woman’s kitchen;he knows the art of locatinga drinking glass, the good corkscrew. He can rinse the bubblesfrom a long-necked twist-top,leave it…