My rifle is human, even as I, because it is my life. I will keep my rifle clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become…

Our grey home was visited last night by a storm. I woke to a green sky standing at my window. I told the storm it could not enter. My husband…

1 —What about here? I ask; brief shore; old blanket we slept under in Genesis; its skin of ripples, the river; out of the basket, sourdough, cheddar, plums. How can…

The faces in Giotto’s Massacre of the Innocents in Scrovengi Chapel, must have been what the faces of mothers in Sarajevo looked like after a massacre during the Siege. They…

The door in the field is held upright by my saying so. Frogs before storm, wind on the rise. The door opens and I still can’t see what lies on…

On the Buda side the gypsies have no one left to steal from. They burn trash at night, sending yellow smoke into the subway. They leave handprints on the tiled…

1979 which the aunts pronounced gowumkee you know cabbage rolls honey and packed into a crockpot pasted all over with pictures of happy brown daisies and then balanced them on…

I want to find the way of the ants, how they build dirt mounds out of human flesh, how they destroy and then carry the little corpses of leaves and…

Toward evening When I grow bored I try to imagine my killer     —“Toward Evening,” Novica Tadić The evil eye was born at the same time as light. Let there be…

The stableboy leads, drives on the chestnut horse. Tears form in the tear ducts of the horse’s eye. In the silent swamp the dry reeds clatter like a pilgrim’s staff.…

“It’s autumn,” I write, and a boat without sails arhythmically scrapes at my heart— as long as it can. All the cards have been played, and the hand-made rock fountains,…

The word ‘bloom’ is a grenade. Pull out the L-pin, and boom.   The dandelion turns into a piñata, confetti blizzard; exploding   is an efficient way to start pollinating.…