You do you
On the bayou there’s no one to sing to but the birds it is for them you feel sometimes a song in yourself pushing against your mind from your…
Oodemas laysanensis
I buried the seeds of my ancestors in the next generation but a blight took the harvest and rodents stole the granary walls from what they held now a…
Night Chorus
Visiting rural Tennessee, I lie awake in a small motel at the edge of a small town, the night throbbing with sounds so robust it seems impossible they could…
Yesterday as Metaphor, Today as Reasoned Disbelief
In 2005 I was walking in Louisville, and a guy shouts out, “The TV’s watching you!” People are continually giving me things that I don’t know what to do…
The Book of Names (Architecture 103)
Suddenly everyone’s friendly. We’re working in the front yard, Boyd and I, and our neighbor who’s never spoken to us calls out, “good job!” And now we’re talking. She’s…
At Grief’s House
Mother’s tears are sick to death. Father’s eyes too small to see. Sister’s eyes are somewhere else and brothers’ eyes believe it. House’s lamps are out.…
Family Therapy
I sing the girls little songs while every plant in the house dies. In group, they say into a microphone: “Today we have learned coping skills.” I cannot…
Where Words are Buried When Worlds Keep Moving
Cancer is a cancer is a cancer invading Publix check-out lines. Cashiers ask you to make a donation for it. There are 84 movies on IMDb that have patients…
The woman behind me in the Target check-out line
pulls down People Magazine asking her friend why J-Lo was wearing “that Cuban flag” during the Super Bowl. I want to tear titles off the front page—Inappropriate & R-Rated…
A Morning Triptych After an Unexpected Snowstorm & Soleimani’s Assassination
The day begins as it always does: with birth control & black coffee. & you have curtains now, so you pull them apart like pages or legs or what…
new year’s diagnosis
it is helpful to imagine you’re in the woods at night / you have to make it / through that’s all / feel your way from tree to tree…