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Each drop of rain is a fraction of a second. It rains all night. If the rain on one leaf could be heard it would be the sound of one life passing. The women nursing her mother thinks at night she sees what she is made of. She is so tired that even with her…

Sense the roosted owl in its bush, the field windy with crickets, the loose cantata of your bull-frogged pond. Beneath her fresh spine, the earth turns with skill Prepare to gather coat and hat, her toy, her growing body from the flesh-crushed hay, to hear the anger of her wakening in your well-meant arms.

While I dress someone sits at a table, someone in the country pulls water from a well. I rake furiously through my hair. As for the others, one moves a chair closer, one writes a love poem. *     *      * Though I have read of them, Rasputin and Houdini are dead. They like to sleep because…

The brownstone facade’s lit up and guarded; inside, a frayed partition. A child stuffs his pockets full of stolen turnips, and women gather together the folds of their white dresses. A man leans against the doorjamb, watching the black plumes file past. With one knee bent in a posture of strength he picks the youngest….

It is to sleep in barns among dumb beasts. It is to choose to breathe that farted air. It is to sleep encumbered, yet alone; to learn how many pounds of blanketing can’t keep you warm. It is to want the fire and watch the fire go out; it is to need the chemistry of…

That sound, the rip of root from soil like hair wrenched from a human scalp, again and again, I offer to silent air. Nearly naked, on my knees, I tunnel dirt with both hands, I grasp matters firmly, I pull them to light. There are villains, there are former friends, insidious grasses with their unseen…

Each day the white bones grow sharper. You peck your food in an acquired way. Sixteen, you look outside and know      not all the winter birds at the feeder      are the same ones each year;      some die, some fly farther south.      But most are there feeding even      when you are not there to watch them….

We stumble in your room – but you, pretending to be asleep, don’t stir even when we cover you with the extra blanket. Mornings, when we ask you how you are, you yawn and cough, pretending not to have heard a word we said. You don’t seem well to me. I press my hand against…

There was sun on the cobwebs this morning, brick exposed on an unfixed wall. Your bright hands opened with names for each thing you touched. You let go of your palms’ fourth lines. The clouds that you wanted opened like clothes on a clear, blue chest. The trees grew warm, and melted their shade under…