Poetry |
“Metal Rat,” “ism” & “Astonished”
“These husks of civic duty. These masks dissolved to the bone beneath. / This hand over a mouth. Over a million mouths. Over // infinite mouths open for a scream so long in coming it sparked / the ancient seas to life.”
Poetry |
“Greater Scope” & “Working After Dark”
“And we also know how birdlike we are, / enchanted in every entrapment / by the promise of a clear escape …”
Poetry |
“Very Long Marriage at Bedtime,” “Not One; Not Two,” & “Negativity Bias”
“I lift the branch, and the ant resumes its task. I pass an enormous anthill teeming with movement. Someone has placed a plastic straw in an opening and the ants tunnel out, landing in a heap on top of each other.”
Poetry |
“A Burrow”
“Some would say this is no life at all, / but how could that be, / when all of my life is / eternally present?”
Poetry |
“Remember the Red River Valley”
“At least he won’t feel the wind, still / blowing cold in May or the rusty hinge / call of the Prairie Larks. His father lies by his side.”
Poetry |
“The Web,” “Unadorned Air” & “An Eye Under a Hundred Tons of Earth”
“Put / My boat in air, my oar through. / I’m // Damp in the heart. I’m a rotted / Knot. / The past is what I’ll grovel over // Until I can kill the air of wishes.”
Poetry |
“Bonfire of the Cryptobourgeoisie” & “Doves and Roses”
“The group around the bonfire / fires off bon mots, their laughter / raucous, covetous, spiteful. // They hedged their bets and lost …”
Poetry |
“There”
“The left foot, yours — that scar from the bone spur — / the belly was yours. How were you not there? // The snow was falling. It just kept on falling.”
Poetry |
“Childhood Suite”
“Her lipstick: unapologetic / crimson. Lacquered hollyberries on the Christmas / brooch pinned each year to the collar / of her winter coat. Patterned red apron, / in the yellow kitchen.”
Poetry |
“Time Is Distance” & “Confession”
“… They were ugly / And cheap and we bought them / When we were poor / And it is now so easy to let them / Go not because we are / Rich but because we have no / Heart for what we no / longer desire.”
Poetry |
“What I Like,” “Elegy” & “The Second Year”
“An elegy reveals the current / state of the grief. Therefore, // I cannot write an elegy. / Grief is a shape-shifter.”
Poetry |
“The Pitfalls of Enlightenment,” “Imagining His Final Hours or Just Like a Dream, You’re Here With Me” & “Go On”
“It is a rite of passage / to learn the game, to take your seat / and study your partner across // the folding table. Inheritance / of how to lose, how to sneak a win.”
Poetry |
“Sarah & Lila”
“In the cemetery, look for the husband’s name. / I finally find you, Lila — stone letters / freshly carved, marble bench facing a pond for / serenity.”
Poetry |
“Carried Onward to Our End”
“But there is no resolution to unknowing, pain; / There is the pale smoke that drifts above the charnel ground. / Shadow men and women bring corpses of their forbears, / bring firewood. Light flames. Tend fires …”
Poetry |
“I Consider My Hands After a Friend Calls Them Lovely” & “Abecedarian for Sainthood”
“Amelia, the young girl I clean houses with, / bites her nails down to the skin, / comes to work on a bus from rehab. / Dusts around orange pill bottles she didn’t / expect to see there, pale moons calling out to her / from inside their powdered wells.”