Give her the name of the longest river in the world or call her river. Either way, she will collect and hold and move everyone from one place to…

  She ran to the forest like the women before her, and like them, she turned into a tree that the gods gave her name, a way to honor a…

  a guinea pig, running loose in the grocery store, refugee from the pet shop next door. Word of the escape traveled more swiftly than the rodent did, and she…

  she rose early to swim. Laps, in the indoor public pool, an hour before the sun reared up. She reveled in a morning layered with contrast: cool air on…

  On the fourth day, I was standing in the front yard stretching after a run (I don’t run), slightly high on endorphins. I could suddenly see everything O the…

  I ask my students, What’s at stake in this poem? I ask my daughters, Did you do your schoolwork? I ask my husband, Did you remember to cover the…

  —after Philip Lawson (1859-1936) The chicken proves accurate in its back and forth: the way I traveled up from Virginia backward on boat, rail, and foot— never acting on…

  I have been moving in and out of one. Every few hours, I hold my hand up to my face. If I can see the hand, I move towards…

  Do you ever feel like an alien? I ask Cliff. He’s arranging my body on the radiation table. Usually I apologize for my muddy boots, but today I'm feeling…

  Sea levels rise and we regret our skins, how they blister as much from cold as from heat. As if the point is mediocrity— that soft, shifting middle ground.…

  Knee-deep in floodwater, I consider the rats. Not the live ones that fight in the alley each night, each entitled to its chicken bone prize, but the poisoned ones…

  —owes a debt to Anne Sexton’s “Just Once” Once a day, I see a flash of white-patched feathers, hear a cable wire mockingbird teach itself a new tune, and…