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The Birds and the Bees

When I hit thirteen, the noun between my legs turning into a verb, my father sat me down and said: one day you will have a wife of your own. A man will come—a helpful neighbor knocking while you’re at work perhaps, or a garlicky colleague at an office party, or a lifeguard on a…

The Florida Sandhill Crane

By wings whose shapes are but half a heart?    Feathers oiled with    country clubs and gasps of delight? Not for these the sandhill crane shakes her beaded voice. Gauche and gangrene, she is the gatekeeper of gibe,    a cement-gray song    edged and pocked in grassy fields, a frock of scarlet over her eye, her own…

Even the Gods

Even the gods misuse the unfolding blue. Even the gods misread the windflower’s nod toward sunlight as consent to consume. Flesh of their flesh, bone of their bone. Still, you envy the horse that draws their chariot. The wilting mash of air alone keeps you from scaling Olympus with gifts of dead or dying things…

Salt on the Tongue

Thierry I am here because it’s too crowded on the other side of this sentence. Take this page—where do I place myself? At the beginning or the end, or in the middle? Or maybe in the corner. I can’t be everywhere, that’s what I’ve been told my entire life. They say we have a choice,…

The Visions of Sane Persons

I shall speak of the tendency among sane and healthy persons to see images flash unaccountably into existence.                      —Francis Galton   This is a tale not of science but of blue. Some say this heat is the worst in history, but history is huge and I doubt it has never been hotter across the Northern…