Poetry

What birdwas thatthat justflew throughmy mind?

Open carry, open for business,open and shut case. Openlike a store. Open like a vault.Any opening in my defenses is yourfault so I close it all up as tight asI can. Then I fold closed bothmy hands again. This gesturemakes a fist. It makes me listlessand makes me brisk and makesme wish for the bicycle…

Transcendence The first thing is silence: the muffling power of snow, that Fairbankssnow hanging on every limb and twig. No noise from nearby roads, nosounds of planes taking off at the airport. Just my skis gliding along,my poles crunching the snow. My breath, and if I stopped to listen, thesound of my heart beating.      is…

On the special ed school tour, he askswhat is that tiny room with the tiny window,and the assistant admissions directortells us it is the seclusion room.We look at the closet-sizefeatureless space with the metal-reinforced door and large thicksteel bar on the outside, and our facesare not as shatter-proofas the glass in that window.With all the…

How to describe the colorof a pond gone fuguein autumn windsurface tinctured blue,sky-stained and deeper watertea-stained from steeping in peatthat netted entanglementthat took a thousand yearsto form. How far the landcan go in tellinga story, waterdark as obsidian nighttoward which I progressevery day feelingendless longing to hold on.

Dear Dactinomycin, I have a question: How do yousave a body from the body itself? Your job: stop cells dividing, freeze growth.The proof: hair coming out in clumps, disappeared eyelashes, platelets drained solow they called for a transfusion. A mother’s job: grow a small body, then grow it up.Even volunteer to disappear, like mitosis, after…

— after C. D. Wright’s Casting Deep Shade “Beech is Anglo-Saxon boc: book, document, orcharter,” she (C. D.) writes. “The shoots grow fasterin the dark,” she writes in her 250-some page diaryof obsession. Here, now, at the smallpox cemeterynear where I live, the shin-high marble grave markers,corners softened, stand canted, like awkward lumber.Bone-white, chiseled only No. 1, 2, 14, they are…

In an old story, the Almighty shaped claywith His hands to fashion the first man.In this story, enslaved hands shaped clay to make bricks to build storied big housesthat will stand in this land. Both storieslead on to sagas of births—natal tales filled with first wails and nations of folkand feats of nation-building. Birthinga nation…