Poetry

  • Hildegard Confides

    Neither pained by blame or seduced by praise, I kept my soul taut as a drawn bowstring, the last of ten children tithed to the church. At nine, buried alive  for the rest of my long life in service to Christ. I was his  bride forever in bloom, braids unbound, white lace veil grazing the…

  • Mackinac

                                  We open Madlibs again, the ferry late the third hour,                and you choose “xiphoid,” how you did twice before. I’m pretty sure                               we are never getting on the boat, I said, We could play again, you said. Along the breakwaters                               seagulls land like tourists, at this time of day,                                              bloated with complaint—                               how silent must…

  • Poem

    If you think of it, every opportunity is last minute. You aren’t great—just the best last. Handed a brink, most maybes die in the back of a throat before lips can dawn. Folk like answers; they want their coupons clipped. Maybe my neck isn’t straight as a ladder—each breath is still its own rung. The…

  • Rue des Martyrs

    At the Musée Gustave Moreau I looked at all the surfaces while you explained the stories.        At the base of the spiral stairs we bared our eyes at Les Chimères, a painting pale and unfinished.        What a heavy task he set himself to finish with color and form all the empty limbs, I…

  • rest in peace, beloveds

    “See, one day, not now, we will be gone from this earth where we know the gladiolas.” —Aracelis Girmay But not today. today there is no funeral & no need for a burial shroud & a casket. in this room we are alive—each one of us tending the flowers that bloom on the small earth…

  • Crying Guy

    Apparently I am this crying guy, eyes full of analogue world in the gap between olive leaves, acknowledging the sea, acknowledging all is fucked as kids and philosophers say and know best, but okay, for a silver-leafed span, storied but brief in the gap between olive branch and grief, I make this noise. It is…

  • Poem

    How long would it take to grow an Eastern White Oak eighty feet tall in your own backyard? And how long might it take to burn one all the way down? Could you shoot that on your phone and let your battery run down until the ash at your feet is cool to touch? Even…

  • I Watched a Box Kite Swoon

    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…