Poetry

My grandfather killed a mule with a hammer, or maybe with a plank, or a stick, maybe it was a horse — the story varied in the telling. If he was planting corn when it happened, it was a mule, and he was plowing the upper slope, west of the house, his overalls stiff to…

There was no air and then there was nothing else but air. This is called the filling of the lungs for the first time. The irreversible reverse of this is when my mother calls me and says: The flame fell off the candle just like that. And I say, Just like what? And she says,…

The danger in buying used books is the notes people leave in them— like leaves, brittle, and coy. This one, dated 1935, addressed: DARLING, signed: YOURS; apologizes for not being the French edition, DARLING, on the way to France. You are on your way to the coast. I gave you an oversized Russian history, which…

All day we travel from bed to bed, our children clutching home-made bouquets of tulips and jonquils, hyacinth, handfuls of yellow salad from the fields. In Pittsylvania County, our dead face east, my great-grandfather and his sons facing what is now a stranger's farm. One great-uncle chose a separate hill, an absence in the only…

Do you want me to show you where the dog licked me in the dream? But now that the dream's over the act's invisible, like water flashing its image only when it moves in the stream bed. My cousin took me to the loft of the barn. We walked to the back then he pointed…

When you died, I fell in love. I have fallen into something dark where every time I open my eyes I am picking you up at the train station, 1965. It might please you to know you are alive here, even if you never saw this place. I keep a nice home, learned from your…

In the still-blistering late afternoon, like currying a horse the rake circled the meadow, the cut grass ridging behind it. This summer, if the weather held, he'd risk a second harvest after years of reinvesting, leaving fallow. These fields were why he farmed— he walked the fenceline like a man in love. The animals were…

It was an old river town and then the river moved away. Happens all the time: the river decides it doesn't like living next to people, there's a flood upstream and the river takes its chance. The problem with this is that some people who lived on the river are now seriously grieved. They do…

fell early this morning, long before we awoke so that by the time we had dressed, had coffee, there was no trace of it anywhere. All afternoon, I couldn't put my finger on what was missing. You said it was probably nothing or only me distorting the facts again. But in my usual way I…