arrived suddenly, left suddenly. In between, we stalked each other, omen to omen, panting. One of us bore a gold cuff around her neck. One of us sported black stockings. Each breath coated our chests in fear—anything could happen. Any second could turn on you, twist— uncatchable. Soon I faced nothing but crushed salvia, bent…
June 24, 2022 In the skyscraper hotel, in a conference room, in between sessions about news, I nod my head at the woman talking, act like I’m following. I’ve learned in a panel this week that: I am not listening. No one listens. One cannot listen. But I can see beyond this woman’s head to…
Say my mom lived in northern Maine, where school stopped for the fall harvest. Say my grandmother insists every county kid picked, even the third graders. Left at five in the farmer’s truck. All day, trailed the digger with baskets. Say it’s always rankled me: the clammy truck bed in pre-light, the baskets waiting at…
A sculptor was tapping eyes out with his chisel, slipping sinews in the forearm, his patron twitching in anticipation of the weight of granite sitting on his corpse. I like to walk around the cemetery because the inhabitants urge people to bring them flowers though they do nothing and their families argue about the proper…
Canoes and cabins—wood, narrowness, hours. Here’s boat- shed, birth-room, cabin, and coffin on riverbank, made by old craft, arranged like loved toys. A small craft is what I too have, that can float on paper or a voice, whether I scribe it or say it (in what- ever weather or key, alone or with others)…
It was not evening-out jewelry, not twice-a-year jewelry. She slept in it. She always said when she died I would have it but almost certainly never pictured me wearing it: how it would lie an inch below my beard, in the hollow between my clavicles, how the serpentine chain would catch stray hairs on my…
When they started calling, we were alert to names of friends/not friends joining the cult of fear?/not fear? Free to drink, smoke, swear but not free to carry the self-same guilt; some lesser god, held less accountable— Two women breed tragedy; two men plot. To live like a man—dash, dash it all. It’s so much…
A glass falls. You send the broom beneath the cabinets. You pluck. Vacuum. Yet always there persists the shard you missed, small as a fingernail, wide as a lemon slice. I know I am speaking to those who have been cut by it, and to those for whom the last shard waits, in shadows, barely…
Often, we love best what is hidden: the locket, our initials etched entwined on the back, the wool coat’s pink silk lining, the painting beneath a painting, its faint hills and far-off church. Last month I bought a pitcher, only to discover that, when tipped to pour, it reveals a hidden message underneath. We love…
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