Look even birds sing in mourning.For the first time in years,a dove in the front yard builds nest,quietly patterns her return with bundles,weaves tiny broken thingsin work of a home.Whereas even the desert still offers itself, a pursuitunfolding unlike our bodies, just constellationsor chain link fences. The first time I hold between my palmsthe remnants of…
How long would it take to growan Eastern White Oakeighty feet tall in your own backyard? And how longmight it take to burn oneall the way down? Could you shoot that on your phoneand let your battery run downuntil the ash at your feet is cool to touch? Even now, I canfeel grubs tunneling undertheir…
Does the rabbit know the fox has also turned to snow?You don’t raise pigs for milk.Wind pursues what it has blown away. Rain fallsgently on the city and its sirens. We’re more water than dust.Every umbrella is a big top.And childhood is a name for a visionary state.If I didn’t try to teach, I’d have…
It’s what the phlebotomists always say, gushing when I slide up my sleeve, straighten my arm to boast bulging channels evergreen like spruce, leafy green like a spring mix, they bubble with delight palpating each protuberance, each tubular translucence swimming just beneath my skin, I suppose they are, perfectly plump for puncture, these outcurved creeks, transporters of blood—I’ve been thinking about blood, I’ve been thinking…
My mother has never died yet.My father has died oh so many years ago.I have never died yet though I have not died from trying.What is the most profound tragedy that can befall a family?And the dream answered: The death of the primary wage-earner.My sister has never died yet though she believes she has been…
a delicate box. The child inside it. It’s okay to not think abouthow the child came to be in the box. It’s okay to focus solelyon what the child offers: the sound of fireweed bending in wind,yesterday’s pages torn from their binding, a small hand. Yesterdaythere was no sign of the child. No warning between…
“What’s for you won’t go by you,” he told me, the great, recalcitrant songwriter so heavy-browed with doubt and kindness. I was eighteen and had taken a Greyhound from New York to Nashville to find him, my corduroys indistinguishable from my self. That whole wolf-on-skates year his music had saved me, made me feel something…
I found a boat tied upat the water’s edge,rocking, rope frayed, oarsbanging in their locks. At home, you neverknew what mighthappen. A surprisea minute, they say. In the distancedark clouds, no traceof the other shore.It might have been wise to havebrought a compassand life jacket,to have packed a lunch.
We’d only just begun to scratch the floors with our own furniture, unfold the box flaps and hang the walls to look like our walls in the old apartment: familiar faces, fruits. Then we heard it, the long scrapes in deep grooves overhead. It came from the devil’s peak, after we’d turned the bedroom into the samedark as the…
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