Poetry |
“Little Soul Contemplates Skin as the Largest Organ of the Body”
“I wanted to be heard by // everyone in my life exactly as I / sounded to myself, wing, singing, but the words / kept imploding like the fragile / soap bubbles I tried to blow gently / to the top of our elm …”
Poetry |
“The Libyan Poet Recites in Brighton, Massachusetts Before He Is Prepped for Surgery”
“Would our bus stop take him / To St. Elizabeth’s in the morning? / Scheduled for the anaesthesiologist, / He said “abdomen” as if I could understand.”
Poetry |
“First Haircut” & “Scientists Overlooked the Snake Clitoris, Until Now”
“I looked down at the wisps that still held the shape / of curls, the small tunnels of hair I’d finger on my head / to distract myself from whatever was going on …”
Poetry |
“Leaving Childhood” & “At the County Fair”
“Suddenly, I felt sad for the hardness / of polished floors where things hit and break, / get swept up, tossed in the trash, not left // where they fall, to be buried under / layers of earth …”
Poetry |
“I Dream About Buying a Gun”
“I don’t want to hurt anybody, / I don’t want to cause sorrow or pain. / I don’t want to kill my enemies, / but I dream about buying a gun.”
Poetry |
“After Reading Bashō, I Remember the Rain”
“I found a quail’s nest under sage plants near the house / woven, I think, while we were traveling, / & the yard seemed abandoned. // The hen burst out under a torrent of hose-water / I unknowingly sprayed into the leaves.”
Poetry |
“Reading Nadezhda Mandelstam in Virgin Islands National Park”
“Every trinket and provision and provocation arrives / By ships riding over sunken ships few remember. / The sea turtles surface for air only when it is safe. / Time is boats rocking their length against waves.”
Poetry |
“Returning” & “Shimmer”
“… we pass what once was America’s tallest / radio tower, flickering red now / to tell the planes there’s something here / sending sound out into the night.”
Poetry |
“January 29”
“He’s stage four, small cell lung. He shrugs. / A guy he knows feeds his flock, / but he doesn’t sit with them. He doesn’t know their names.”
Poetry |
“Messages”
“The porch light shining on my bedroom ceiling / means my son isn’t home yet and the clock / glows an hour I used to rock him in my arms / with the stealth of a woven web.”
Poetry |
“My Stone” & “Falling With the Snow”
“It’s not showy / like turquoise / or rose quartz / and will never / find a home / in a bolo tie / or a belt buckle.”
Poetry |
“Field Notes: Worcester County, October”
“What seeds itself without my intervention: goldenrod, wood asters, Deptford pinks revealed when storms blow dead leaves west.”
Poetry |
“The Circular Dog” & “The Fragrance of Thunder”
“French fries evoke high school Fridays, / salt stippled to the hope I’d find myself. / A moth tastes pheromones seven miles / from his maple-dark lover.”
Poetry |
“The Con Artist’s Daughter” & “The First Time He Visited His Dead Wife”
“… if I didn’t get caught again // the arrest would be expunged. / I fell in love with that word, / practiced saying it: x-sponged …”
Poetry |
“In memory of always forgetting,” “Pallaksch” & “Copia”
“And a different missing grandfather, / profession pharmacist, / handing his wife Rose a knife and saying — ‘Finish the Job.’ / Anecdote absolute. No before or after.”