Poetry

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…

At this time of day, goldish-gray rains down and our garden plot turns to mud.I forgot to plant anything this year, but it’s totally fine because I saw a headline, Honey Bees Are Not At Risk of Extinction. For this, I praise last year’s plumeof borage, chamomile, salvia. So this is how things will be…

Whose rooftops droop like power lines and tiltingstovepipes cough fibrils of smoke from failing firesthat haven’t given heat since Mondale lost. I knowthe faded NASCAR signs, the velvet robes          of carcasses          on deer hoists          in bow season, and window shades handmade from sheets.This place of Cheez Whiz and knockoff pop.This place where cars on blocksarchitect strange piles in…

The first time the girls ask what the word means,                                         colonized, a lark falls dead at our feet, undoubtedly, on a small lawn of white petals from the climbing rose.                                         Platitudes, I mean plenitudes, the greenery’s plenitude. I will wait until tonight and when the bristling blossoms close, I will tell the girls something or everything. I…

A polite town. The mountainswearing purple for our pleasure, clouds holding their snowy breathso everyone’s clueless parentscould get home safe from work.“I’m gonna die here,” Shauna says, her head up against the chain-linksuch that when she angles to catch mein her periphery there’s a red X indented in her brow like a responseon a test,…

Clouds race each other across the heavens, as dazzlingas they are ephemeral. Frayed ravens inquire,Why can’t you accept his death or anyone else’s? Botanists sayplants register memories of winter, which they useto decide if it’s safe, meaning warm enough, to bloom.Scores of sexually deceptive orchids were discoveredon two new islands this June. Snakes make friends.Mice reflect…

“Why is my mama sleeping?” he asksstruggling to unbuckle, hardlyhearing the noiseof the machine gun bursts His childish torso slidesunder her breasts and belly—it hurts them both, yetlax as seaweed they lie for ages under the watersmoving along with the tideuntil a man’s voiceshouts: “Come out! Out!” “Seriously?” is allshe can manage, as if lodged…

You’d think it was a teenager in a rented tuxgoing to the prom in a borrowed car butit’s a cedar waxwing in his cupsdrunk on juniper berries.I get it.I was allowed one dance at the senior promas my mother worriedI might have sex right after—disgracing the Lord and the familyin that order.The Lord in those…