Poetry

When our reprieve began I was reintroduced to Osip, my husband— a gaunt man who walked clutching his trousers. (Belts could be used for suicide, a serious offense.) The prison staff was rosy-faced. The young learn quickly: To kill is good, to be killed, bad. Soon they rise in the ranks, have their photos taken…

When we undressed in the tack room, we kept our backs turned, cradled our new breasts like the barn cat’s kittens and counted ribbons strung like tiny laundry overhead: blue, red, yellow, white, pink, green. We giggled in the dark there over the school nurse’s diagram, the new words. But we all said yes, as…

Flat, jaw-dropped face of a Downs kid, half-shut eyes, pale lids like two oysters. A wide, squat body, a slowness, he sits on a low wall, rocks forward and back with his whole torso, face blank with the rhythm of pushing a stroller forward and back, that soothing, shushing motion. My baby waits at home;…

for Osip Mandelstam   For us, all that’s left is a dried bee, tilted onto one wing. Not long ago, a bloom fastened its tongue, while its belly tried unsuccessfully to tip it backwards. We mustn’t touch— anything without water is without give. This bee is our scout— one day, dust will pronounce itself in…

A drunk man reels his tractor around the square lawn, midnight. His wife stares from the front door window as if on a half-sunk ship’s deck at a shark tearing through the dark water. She chews her thumbnail raw. Two of their sons, in blue pajamas, shuffle across the linoleum rubbing their eyes. She plays…

From a rain-stained square tunneled into the rough-shingled roof, the skylight begins, in small creaks, to complain. I crane, look straight up at the bottoms of two black feet— three prongs and inches, each; between them dips the hammock of a full-bellied crow, round and big as the cauldron he belongs in. From below, I…

(Amphibrachys pedalis) This rare symmetric newt has short limbs that abut a strong unspotted body. Its habitats are worldwide, but naturalists list it as native to Limerick. Hatched from equipoised egg, the newborn amphibrach swims to rhythms of water rippling in rural ponds; wriggles equal forelimbs to dodge the gape of fish-mouths. As tail flutters…

My brother and I without coats on the front porch waved goodbye, the day our father left, with hands held low, close to our chests, so our mother behind us at the window couldn’t see. She stayed inside, and when his car took the corner, we turned and saw her—the curtains, long and white, parted…

Surfacing from the deepest pool I’ve ever fallen into, I emerge gasping for air, and searching for something to tell me where I am and how I got there. Strangers dressed in white who aren’t nice don’t tell me anything I need to know. They just circle the bed, brandishing that tube that brings a…