Poetry

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…

a delicate box. The child inside it. It’s okay to not think about how the child came to be in the box. It’s okay to focus solely on what the child offers: the sound of fireweed bending in wind, yesterday’s pages torn from their binding, a small hand. Yesterday there was no sign of the…

“What’s for you won’t go by you,” he told me, the great, recalcitrant songwriter so heavy-browed with doubt and kindness. I was eighteen and had taken a Greyhound from New York to Nashville to find him, my corduroys indistinguishable from my self. That whole wolf-on-skates year his music had saved me, made me feel something…

I found a boat tied up at the water’s edge, rocking, rope frayed, oars banging in their locks. At home, you never knew what might happen. A surprise a minute, they say. In the distance dark clouds, no trace of the other shore. It might have been wise to have brought a compass and life…

We’d only just begun to scratch the floors  with our own furniture, unfold the box flaps  and hang the walls to look like our walls  in the old apartment: familiar faces, fruits.  Then we heard it, the long scrapes in deep   grooves overhead. It came from the devil’s  peak, after we’d turned the bedroom into the…

          Sometimes, we let ourselves believe we’re talking to his ghost. Sometimes, we think memory, its rhyme.           How long can you stay           afloat? my sister asks when he admits to paying his ex-girlfriend’s rent again. He doesn’t care           that she’s seeing other men           and avoids his calls— doesn’t care that he owes back-taxes and hasn’t held…

Where are the flying stars of my childhood? Evenings lit like a glitterball’s sparkle against the night’s dim walls. Their absence is like aging: one less pulse each year. I want my childhood of darkness bedazzled again with shards of light— my tiny lighthouses, my suburbs of surprise— where the shadows of dogwoods and crepe…

DEFINE, meaning “the degree of distinctness in outline of an object, image, or sound,”           sound being some motion invisible to the eye, progenitor to an empire of echoes,           although empire implies dominion, a definition demanded from its subjects,           all of whom are subject to their own purpose, “one that may be acted upon,”           which is…

I’m attracted to the em dash—that bridge across the void— a balance beam—a baton passed across thoughts—the sexiest break—the turntable’s tonearm before the groove kicks in— the “Electric Slide” of punctuation—(it’s electric!)—not an en dash  or a hyphen—an expanded truth—playing the long game—the schemes  between chess moves—all the small mercies—the giant oak on Corning Street …