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  • Strong Stars

    Mottled grouse peck      up gizzard stones            before the first snow— seasons move on      as if the human heart were not            infinitely fragile. The sow bear's stained snout lifts,      sniffs the wind, then bows            to claws raking in stems, berries, rasping leaves.      A twelve-year-old, pleased, tells her aunt            I kissed a boy…

  • Forrest in the Trees

    I saw my first ghost when I was nine years old, only I didn’t know it was a ghost at the time. This was on the Great Plains, in South Dakota, I think, on our way to the Black Hills. I was with my mother, my three-year-old sister, Lillie, and my new stepfather, Forrest Bender,…

  • After Estrangement

    You should know the kind of morning it is— one gods have argued over for years. But I've decided I'm under a Byzantine curse out of which endings situate themselves like deep forests. The players are strewn in the empty heart of a house. She's called up her lost cat who kept her comfortable when…

  • Black Wasp

    It buzzes over my head and enters the wood near the roof. I paint the wooden deck with red and move out of the way, drops of paint like blood after its wings, like a trace of what I knew when it first stung me, years ago, made me dance like the thief of murals,…