The Palmist

poetry
  Her children burn their prayers so they will go out on the wind. She says: Look at this circle this line look at this hand. See these loves these…

Elegy to my Family

poetry
  My middle name went down in the Tyrrhenian off Anzio Beach, life jacket filling with the sea. After that, my father, split in half, would sing into the bathroom…

Seamless Bead

poetry
  Smooth and cool with a streak the color of clouds and fog broken   by a coastline, the dove’s egg, because I was pregnant,   seemed to be a…

Nailing the Steps for a Tree Fort

poetry
  Brother, do you remember                the splinters, the shape of that conversation? The words                the bent metal made? How I…

Grown

poetry
  I am two people at dusk, two bodies wrapped in thin cotton Among the crabgrass on some night in August when the narrow Alley light of the full moon…

The Waking Life

poetry
  It is rare for a person to enter a castle, but common for him to die there. Often enough I feed the wrong meter. One bird will raise another’s…

Ways in Which the Daughter Is Imagined

poetry
  Would you believe my red if I exposed the green underneath? Would you carefully cry into my figure and mourn the wet shoulder in your wake? Don’t bother— this…

Prying Oklahoma from a Song

poetry
  Tell me the distance between here and home is not remorse or an old loss rousing out of sleep. Tell me memories are not attached to time. Tell me…

The Persistence of Memory

poetry
  Remember October, the one pressed in your bible & that red whipping wind over the pier. Remember the heavy light   of a bright dying, the compass, a magic…

September Song

poetry
  To conjure love from bitterness, To plant the mint and watch it thrive, From anger capture anger’s fright, Whisk pity into empathy, To walk the dogs in fields at…