could have been raven scraping her beak against granite sparking or dipping crane stirring death from waters dumb floated mush on surface we circulate to shore gather sticks that…

  Hummingbirds are flying to Mexico and out of the blue a postcard, a photographic grid of recent life—you in sunglasses, a giant cactus, children in their striped suits poolside—…

  She imagines it is the day she is born. What does she want? What does it cost to be real? Isn’t the wind the breath of the earth? Will…

  I enter the mouth of the whale. I am the mother-to-be carried   by night. A slow swallowing, down the throat my plump body   goes. Into the hollow,…

  She thinks it’s funny the boys down the road call her a crow when it’s a term better suited to her husband with his horde of shiny things: his…

  In each of us there is a girl always wanting more and in her wanting becomes someone no one wants to help. Not mice in the board room where…

  She tongues French toast to her left cheek. Mom, she says, there’s a bug on the floor by the fridge. There it is, I say, a stink bug. Chew…

  It can’t just be a killer who cuts out hearts. It’s got to be a killer with a blender selling red popsicles in Central Park. It can’t just be…

  When the classroom’s somber loudspeaker voice said “our president,” was I the only one . . . surely I wasn’t the only one thinking our student body president had…

  I. You and your mother sit on the futon and watch Twelve Angry Men*. She tells you she has been looking forward to this. Lately, you have taken to…

  burns a hole in your head sprouts wings and flies won’t bark up the right unless you shell out or marry it hand over fist penny wise or not…

  I After working out, I stop by the café across the street that stays open late and I sit at the bar in a favorite spot. I am thirsty…