Summer’s End

poetry
  She came to me three times last night. Padded across the carpet +++and hardwood and in a voice so clear she sounded like fresh river water said, +++Mama, I’m…

Development

poetry
  The property line widened like a spreading stain. Drank ink and swelled into map. The line held the land like an unborn child. Then: pavement crawled forward. Crawled away.…

The Grandfather Clock

poetry
  Deep in the caverns of the memory unit, my grandfather’s trying to describe what time feels like. It’s a square on a piece of paper, he says, it’s shaped…

Tough Love

poetry
  As you can see I’m dying, the professor said to open our first class. +++++His face, worn to gray skin and bone, left no doubt. Ridged brows shadowed his…

Paleontology

poetry
  I was enrolled in paleontology, to fulfill the general ed. science requirement. The lab entailed drawing gastropod, bivalve, and cephalopod fossils. I’d come to lectures and listen to what…

Pastoral with Crohn’s Disease

poetry
The grapes in the arbor, ++the currants in the vines, The mint on the windowsill, ++the garlic in flaky braids. Your in-laws planted ++more than they could prune in their…

Litany at 92 Pounds

poetry
Icicled to perfection, cold curves ++softly weeping, I can pierce ++++like some narwhal’s tooth exquisite, almost mythic. ++My body is a tuning fork, ++++sung when struck, a frequency pure as…

Language, first and last

poetry
  From mouth to nib, a row of urgent pleasures, unsealed from flesh and blood, throbbing with hope, the way I bore children from between my legs, painful bliss that…

Name This Body

poetry
  Out in the reeds I am the person I was. The sky is the same; the water is a perfect blue. Nothing seems to have changed here at the…

Man Eaters

poetry
  I remember trying to fall asleep many nights on the stretcher arm draped over my eyes the diesel and latex smells the pressure of the arm on my eyes…