Poetry

for all the horses I didn’t get to ridethe years of my girlhood in Montana.I wasn’t Terry Jo, the last childand only daughter of a rancherwhose spread lay deepin the sheepland steppe, forty milessouth of our little town.Terry Jo, whose mother, like allthe ranchers’ wives, moved to townwhen snow closed the ranch roads,so her child…

and I keep in touch with you’re pissing me off you’re pushing my buttonsI’m not interested in rescheduling Listen! Do you hear that? That’s my tongue licking a laceration, a bloody metacarpal, a fracture; that’s my nasal baritone, my UUUUUU unfurling your foothold. Wolves keep in touch, and I with my keen sense sense extirpation…

Sometimes I read pages of books without retaining anything.I am thinking about my own drama and caesurauntil I come across a word like creosote, which seems familiarbut I have to look up. When I go to the dictionary, I realizeI am wondering who will bury me and where,going over the time I was almost hit…

They are big fans of horror film.In the fading light of a November afternoon,The gray surface of a pondLooks like a movie screen to them. The moving branches reflected in itAre like the fingers of the blindGroping to touch the face of someoneWho’s been calling out to them In the voice of geese flying overhead,The…

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…

You have been away too long.For pleasure. On business.You are coming home and the almanacpredicts heat waves, hurricanes,other unlikelihoods. The old barin our town is serving seven cocktailsfor the price of six. The deck is open.Pleasure. You are coming homewith your pregnant girlfriendwhom no one has met. The babywill be named Bullet or Hunter or…

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…

In the church, midweek at noon,there is a middle distancebetween the piercing bluewindow of pure beliefand the bone vault housingmy heart’s disbelief, a dimyielding distance relatedto my prayer: another day’sdelay before you are nowhere—for death fixes all distances                                like a new nail.