a tangle of wings and abdomens slappingthe windowpane. My first instinct was to annihilate them. My next instinctto pamper them, to lay out a buffet of egg-enticing garbage, the shriveledstrawberries languishing in the fridge put to use at last. I wanted to learnto regard the divine not with ambivalence, but the insouciance of my dog’sgroggy…
“How much are you willing to sacrifice?”the spandex-suited antagonist asksin the movie I have decided to rentalmost without thought, it being Friday, late,my wife’s body sprawled impressivelyacross the couch so that I decide, finally,to sit slouched on the floor beneathmy pile of blankets, but now, in the dark,my nose close to the screen, the villainspeaking…
Near Chinatown, at the intersection waiting for the light, an older Chinese woman blurts out, “Nice dress. 4 or 6?” “Oh, I used to be a 6,” she says when I confirm her guess, “now I’m an 8 or 10.” Chagrin lingers in the air, and I want so badly a rescue from the body,…
Late March on Alaska’s Gulf coast,a day of sun recast to a scrimof clouds showering snow onto mountainsides of hemlock and Sitkaspruce, every bough a white shelfbending under wet weight. Chestnut-backed chickadees flitthrough branches, fly to my palm,a now-familiar source of seeds. One by one, they carry theminto the trees, stuff them into barkcrevices, behind tufts of lichen….
The greatest sin—to say of a day: nothing happened. Some days—the greatest reprieve.
a crane wakes me to say, fear is a thief.fear, the fog still on the shoulders of our fields, the rapeseed, the peat. in a barley field, a boyescapes Holodomor. grandmother sees him there.falls in love with him. did they embrace in that fielduntil wrinkled like walnuts? rather, they lived a life of common cruelty.she bore two…
for Erin Coughlin Hollowell Glory of rain, glory of sea icesilver as a fish crow’s wings carving sunrise, gloryglory glory of moose big as a city busgrazing on rain-soaked grass, gloryof fireweed that has lost its fine fall silk to wind,glory of beluga and humpback whale invisiblefrom these downpour-beaten cliffs,glory of black spruce, mountain ash,…
We’re standing atop the hill watching streaks of sunsetfade over dimming buildings, you hold my waist frombehind as I make eye contact with a dark blue raven ina tree just beyond the precipice. Farther than the treeyou made me kneel behind as the wind lapped at mybare arms and the mosquitos came closer for the…
We stand hushed on the patio. Stars fall—brightash—between branches of the large mesquiteleaning over us as the scientist—our unexpectedguest—holds high the recording of elf owlshooting he’d magically found in his car. They’rein the saguaro, he whispers. They’ll answer. Andsilent we listen. Waiting for one then anotherowl to sound, we hear a motorcycle, then acar revving…
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