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Poetry
Poetry
Aubade with Calf
So early the mist remains hammocked / between hills. My hand / palms a calf’s muzzle. // We are two beings / drawn together by instinct. By this definition, / I have found the one.
July 2024Poetry
The Wisdom Package
I ask the youngish eye doctor why my eyes itch / and burn and why new floaty bits / of paramecium-shaped debris swim // through my view each day
June 2024Poetry
My Mother’s Disease Introduces Me to My Mother
My mother’s disease wants / to know my name. // My mother’s disease takes / me in // with my mother’s eyes.
June 2024Poetry
My Father Not the Sky
My dad used to wake us up at 5 AM on Sundays / with the vacuum cleaner, saying, Get out of bed, / the day is wasting, and then he’d be asleep on the couch // by nine, just as the sun began to lift its head / over the houses.
June 2024Poetry
Happysad
Gobbling tortilla chips with gleeful abandon, I forget to chew, and one triangle catches in my throat. Instantaneous panic. Sudden, deep, mammalian fear.
May 2024Poetry
Dear Woman Who Tried to Pick Me Up at a Hollywood Club in 1998
What if I’d said yes? Imagine I go home with you that night, / when I’m twenty, and when we wake up in the morning, / you ask, You know you snore? You laugh at my / nighttime retainer, which I’ll wear for the rest of my life, and say, You look hot.
May 2024Poetry
In the Freezer
she kept pig haunches, / the shoulder joints of cows, / buffalo neck and guts, / all stuck to the ziplock bags. / If anyone ever asked, / Mother simply laughed.
May 2024Poetry
Pink Suede Boots
Decades old now, / but the leather’s held up, and the curve / of the instep is still elegant. / I gave them away to my goddaughter, sixteen / and blossoming.
April 2024Poetry
When I Come to Get My Things
I am amazed at how much of my shit I left / with her, and to see it piled in her hallway / clears space in me for what? // I wander my new emptiness / as the small bag of her things I’ve brought / weighs down my hand
April 2024Poetry
King Rail Reserve
Wind-plowed furrows in ice across the marsh. / Cattails frozen suppliant. Loosestrife withered // colorless under a bright but ineffective sun.
April 2024
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