Three Poems
Narcissist #1 I’m so amazing I could lick myself. Narcissist #2 Did you see how well I licked myself? Narcissist #3 I was so upset. They barely noticed the way I licked myself.
Poetry
Black
My favorite God a horse the color of my name. And when I ride him, a heat between my legs, like tongue on ice, friction of moon against darkness. Over and over, the hooves, the rain, finding the ground. Hearts, black boots flung there in the mud behind us. And all around us, the leaves…
Her Body
1. The Fingers They are small enough to find and care for a tiny stone. To lift it with wobbly concentration from the ground, from the family of stones, up past the pursed mouth— for this we are thankful—to a place level with her eyes to take a close look, a look…
Talk
You were going to ask me why I am here, and I’m going to tell you. But I want you to look at the scar on my arm, this one right here in the shape of a mouth, though not a human one. I like to talk about my scars, I like to talk about…
Ethics of Twilight
“As it leaves dawn behind and advances into day, light prostitutes itself and is redeemed—ethics of twilight— at the moment it vanishes.” —E. M. Cioran Ethics of secrets and vanishings, of sunny downfalls and cloudy coverups. The reign of commonsense has ended and strangeness floats through the air. Deceptive moonlight, dusky erasures—…
Two Tragedies, With Preface
Every dusk there gather in the trees birds whose bodies lean heavy as magnolias on the bent and swaying branches. Every dusk, in trees, birds gather, looking heavy as magnolias or the shadows of magnolias, since in color birds are darker; and since they scatter, turning to reassemble on their branches, burning slowly in their…
Days of 1968
She came to me with a mind like fire and a name written in smoky letters on the wind. She came to me with the grief of a fallen angel, with white arms that should have been wings and skinny legs sadly rooted to the ground. She came to me barefoot in a sleeveless dress,…
Letter from the Garden
Three days of spring winter and suddenly, birds everywhere. The sky and garden are not enough for them. They beat upon the pane of glass through which I watch them, wanting entrance. It was wrong to think that they were happier than I, or that nothing was denied them, when I, myself, had shut them…
In the Backyard
This morning a hawk plunges straight for the squirrel at my feeder and leaves only its signature: blood on the snow. All morning it circled the yard, then dove, stunning itself on the glass sky of my window, and in minutes returned, braving the thin, perilous channel between hedgerow and house. I was watching its…