Poetry

This practical kid, born Capricorn, actuary of the stars, he’s planning my death, sure of the thermodynamic heaven he’s invented. Because energy must go somewhere in this system, in his I’ll be repurposed as a tree. And this comforts me, as no discount coupons for paradise ever could. Finally fitting, I’ll meet my zero as…

O tulip, tulip, you bloom all day and later sway a deep-waisted limbo above the dinner table, waiting for a coin to drop into your well, for the stars to pin your stem to their lapel. Soon, on ocean winds, dawn cries its devotion, our world entranced once more into being. Let go your sumptuous…

1. Know your origin: you are a token of the afterwards of love. What flinches in the ribbon of your utterly new blood is nothing but the echo of a bed post— pulse.            You have grown up. From filament within your mother’s bulb, you have evolved into a chandelier of bones, weightlessly orbiting your portion…

All winter the ghosts were waiting for a new high-school teacher who refused to appear, and so you were roped in. February had the year on pause, the days like holes that tripped you over and over in the frozen yard. You had no knowledge of history or chemistry yet were expected to teach the…

Sometimes when I’m reading, I’m distracted by the invisible book underneath the book I’m actually reading and the problem is this: it’s better. It’s like the superball under the couch that your fingertips barely brush: the slightest contact and it’s gone, gliding easily away, because its form is nearly perfect, there, a sphere in the…

Reminds me of early winter—field dressed, dangling from a porch girder like an upside-down garland of roses, no longer animal or drifting hole in a snow-blazed moor. How is it the body knows it deserves the ground before the clouds? The noose almost giving in? Suddenly thawed, dropped in its own shadow, held: un-mothered, sucked…

El Negro de Banyoles tugged the hem of his orange loincloth to save Europe from shame. Storm clouds darkened the gallery skylights. Bruegel’s blind man led a parade of blind men into a ditch as a student sketched a copy at her easel. After the war, Vietnamese beat cradles, tools, and kettles from spent artillery…

Yep. She fell running across the open space. It wasn’t her fault. It’s just One more thing that happened. Knee bleeding, She wouldn’t get picked for the team. None of us understood, of course. We stood there, looking and looking. I’ve read that in this earth we bring forth wind As if soughing, that we…

Near the end of the course, in that part of the hour Reserved for questions, a silence fell on the class When the girl who’d been quiet all semester Raised her hand to ask if anyone there besides her Believed in heaven. An embarrassed silence While each of us wondered why she hadn’t chosen To…