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…
The nasal, echoing sound of my breathBouncing through the acoustics of my headSteady, rhythmically blended with the beats of my heartElevating, escalating, matching my stride…
Last night I spread mouthwash over my face
instead of toner.
Last week I tried to open the car
with my cell phone.
I lost the word wash…
They will have unstitched the flowers from your collar, edited my name toward a sad misspelling. We won’t recognize each other nor the rooms in…
Some, in their hula hoop circus gear and spandex pirate stripes, bump to late-night techno spinning at Rouge Cat’s Euro trash lounge or grind to…
Our mothers proclaimed that nothing good ever happens after midnight, as if having us in bed by the time the two clock hands clasped at…
I’m cleaning out my cupboards and polishing my vocal chords. I’ve taken the carpets out from under my feet, shaking them free of stray stones…
There’s enough moss to go around is what I say to myself. When I lived on the East coast moss said only North, but here…
The half-dead baby crow rescued and released came back to me in a dream. He was six feet tall, sleek feathered, shining blue. He wanted…
When you were pulled from the surgical slit in my stomach, each of my sixteen years cried out. Cradled by my arms and the eyes…
It’s a renegade blessing, a luckless charm, an impossible command, a petition with one signature, a spangled net of wishes thrown over the precious other,…
I know it’s true because it happened to me as I stood alone in the mourning moonlight, after they planted my love in the ground…
Step One: Close your eyes. When it climbs on your face like a spider monkey / and tries to pry your eyelids open remember this…
It is not disappearing, so much as being lifted up and whisked away. The wind carries the ground off, particle by particle, mote by mote.…
I’ve had the news on since 9. The television screen has been yapping, of course, nonstop screeching about the horrible news. One more murder, another…
In Memoriam: Josiah, Sarah, Herman, Katherine, Boyd & Paul Moore, and Lena and Ina May Stillinger, killed June 10, 1912 in Villisca, Iowa. They don’t go…
Tonight, in the loamy darkness, we grow into shapes resembling ourselves. The forest breathes through us — heady infusions of oxygen. Our combined age is…