Poetry

There are feelings I would rather not have,so I avoid certain types of texts and images—particularly pornography. Sometimes I think this makes mea better person, but, in actuality, it also makes me a coward.Am I so afraid I’ll enjoy some ridiculously sexist fantasy?I’m not sure what I’d do with the uglinessI’d find inside me. Don’t…

The graveside prayers and eulogies over,A stray dog came to bark at us among the headstonesAs we trooped back over a hill watchingThe wind lift the widow’s skirt higher and higher,While the undertaker ran after us,Waving an umbrella someone had left behind. We couldn’t help but think of our friendLying red-faced in his pricey new…

Out in the open, there is a cowshed.There are the expected gaps and hornets. Here lives our story, where we used to meet—You smelled like hay, were always listening to some other sound, the buzzing of your ownideas chasing us down. You began building a staircase out of thorny branches, then a vest out of…

Growing up, there were always two laws.My mother, the greater, the greatestWho made enemies if necessary outOf the trashman or the paperboy.Queen without her court and details,Commands so precise, you could notFollow if you were not one of her students;If you did not know her nobility you mightThink she was crazy in her house dressStanding…

When the sun broke up the thunderheads, and dissonance was consigned to its proper place, the world was at once foreign and known to me, that was shame leaving the body. I had lived my life from small relief to small relief, like a boy pulling a thorn from his foot. Wet and glistening, twisting…

Thirty-six years till my mother is bornThe perfumes she worewhen she was young    whatever happened The bottom of her jewelry drawercalls and calls as I run her through her first school playShe doesn’t understand Stroke my stomach    mother    till I understand Why is the movie too advanced?Why do we have to stay home and chase…

The buzz of electricity circles a yellow bulbin Maine’s humid heat. June bugs bombthe porch light with spiny legs—date-coloredand oversize.                              Spring peepers pin the night,pitch a universe in my mother’s kitchen, exceptI have not yet occurred to her. She is sixteen,and…

Thoughts have gone wolf again, hunting for reasons in the dark.Suppose we were never               supposed to fallinto each other’s arms? Made a bone-boattossed all our memories in—              watched it sail. There’s a chance I know nothing and I will stickto you like…

watched a crew wipe the family namefrom the face of our supper club. The new owners slappeda cartoon moose on the sign out front. If I tell him I love him,either he is holding my little hand while we step across an icy parking lottoward a greasy burger joint or he is on his deathbedand…