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…

  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.…

  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…

  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…

  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…

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…

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…

  We babysit two guinea pigs named Bitch and Luther. You dream Pinka went on tour with Metallica. I can’t look at October grass without gagging. Someone retrace our grins…

  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…

  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…

  Along the clifftop, a keyhole emerges in the sky—purple opening unglazing itself. A lozenge of light travels across the highway shoulder where I am standing. I let a horsefly…

  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…