Maybe I was asleep in dawn, the grandestdame that ever unbent me like a willow. Isn’t nature my ma, my salve and solving?Soon the sun had arisen, leaving velvet marks on foxes secure in ferny hideouts,squirrels thronging for fallen acorns, branches torn from oaks in tornado watches, cloudycovers on me. And all my secrets scattered….
follow the back road’s twist & turn, try to lose the red-winged blackbird’s scolding lyrics—hurry on past— hum with summer insects’ soundscape that doesn’t bitelike the mosquito woods that root dark & twisted their shadow & light move like the East Twin River that offers water for the Thompson Familyold growth maple that transforms sunlight into oxygen inhale & you becomepart of this place
Called widow makers because their branches fallduring droughts. They sever their own branches to conserve water, to save the whole tree. As if cuttingoff a hand to save a whole body. How does the tree decide what to drop? This one dropped two limbs,one onto a car. It only took the men a day to remove the…
No matter where I went todayI was not Michael.I was not even the shadowof my middle name.No name took my place,no name was asked.When I sat on a benchthinking of you, tryingto see your face,I was not Michael—I knew because the rainchose to fall nearbut not upon me,and it wasn’t to makean exception.People were walking…
Friday—first day of fall Two friends, two beers each. One has just held the hand of theother’s dying mama, regaling her with tales of her son’smisadventures. He’s moving to Houston the next day, far intothe flooding swamp. Mama is quiet, peaceful, pain-free. Go, shesays, go have a good time. After the two beers the friends…
My roommate was having an argumentwith his girlfriend: It’s the wrong key. No it’s not. Well it isn’t working. Once you and I had disagreements like that,I ended it. But there was a pointwhen I had a codeto your front door. People had the wrong idea about us.No socks on the stairswas one of your…
I divide my time between the NewYork in my mind and a cow-sprouted field, divide my rightear from my left, though the leftreceives god-like frequencies onlymy poodle can hear. I divide myliver from my brain when I swillwine and smoke. Divide my sunnydisposition from the sun it neverowned. Divide my body frommy bed, home from…
There was a poisoning.Perhaps from the reincarnation ages ago where your hands curled and stitchedthe fake flower bouquets of 1860, dusted them with Scheele’s green,the arsenic powder breathed into your child lungs. Or maybe before that,like Napoleon, copper sulfate from a papered bedroom settled like a secretinto your waistcoat and gloves. Centuries have passed since…
Windswept moors and dirty villages, returning home to a place no longer home, love triangles—when my own triangle began. How could this happen, I wondered. I’d been so devout and chaste, like a Hardy character—at the beginning. Eustacia Vye and Clym Yeobright felt even more real to me with my newfound experience, how you can…
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