Night after night this waking, suddenly middle-aged and barely able to drag myself to the kitchen, finding it hard to be in night’s gulf with so much blatant wanting,…

  The feel of a sheet is called the hand. The feel of a hand is called a plan. Paris is a plan. His petunias are a plan. After the…

  Chatsworth Estate, Derbyshire England, May 2012   Having left London to see what was demolished in 1920, which was the world’s largest greenhouse.   Having found in its place a hedge…

  When the task is vast and grim, the gods fit you with blinders— bend your focus to the miniscule. Awaiting no godmother, Aschenputtel settles to the work, bows her…

  Taken for granted, his teeth, when taken from his mouth one crisp spring day, suddenly seemed so useful and white (the clever way they end-stopped the sad, pink sponge…

  Winter-honed knife, halving the space between us. Each week, the having and not having. And in the fields beside the road, the calving.

  There’s Monet at the edge of the water-lily pond. It’s 1905. The Great War is still no menace, but he can sense his mission: to paint canvasses that will…

  I am a fourth magnitude star above Manhattan, a full moon rising beside me. I am blue socks in a drawer of blue socks. I am the shell passed…

  The pond we kissed beside was full of soda cans and stars. The bathroom sink continues to drip into the orange stain of itself. The same color would be…

  Hammurabi loved flowers and strewed his bridal bed with rose petals, blood red. Nero loved the fuchsia for attracting hummingbirds and their delectable tongues. Louis XIV sent Madame de…

      "All actual life is encounter." Martin Buber   The cows look slowly up, flick flies with their tails, with their ears, the whole of their flanks twitching…

  His hand sunk in me like a sunset. I lay on my back and listened the night to black. My skin smelled deciduous. I breathed petals in the silence.…