Poetry |
“Eleanor Remembers”
“It was the kind of town where if your neighbors / saw you walking, they assumed you’d lost your license — / too many DUIs — or your car, too many payments // missed.”
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.”
Essay |
“Fairfield”
“But there was something in the dirt, in the water, my mom’s cousin Troy said — a toxic fallout that made its way into the bodies of the people.”
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?”
Essay |
“Bad Faith, Obsession, and Guns: on Reading Lady Wing Shot by Sara Moore Wagner”
“Whereas I’ve spent my life avoiding guns, Wagner faces them straight on. As it turns out, both of us had something to learn from Annie Oakley: ‘She knew to not look at the gun, but at the thing, / to point at what you wanted until it fell / at your feet.'”
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.”
Literature in Translation |
“I Didn’t Want to Be Born Here (or There),” “Decompression” & “untitled”
“I’m made up wholly of inertia / from which I suck the strength // of the stump / of a phantom / tree”