They hook into my back and shoulder, press into my temples; they move up and down me along with the other fingers; they are filled with full-moon nails and scrape along my cheek, and when they are done with me, they are easily taken to other tasks; they are busy with work, and when I …
The way the bees in the lavender are so intent on nectar that they don’t notice me: I am not one of them, I am not the wind that knocks them off their flower, slows them down, and I am not the sun speeding the flowers past this bloom. I am a shadow, a footstep …
Because she was the first I did not know it as familiar, how quickly the body takes in a different kind of breath that is the beginning of a different kind of breathing that will not change back again. Pulse changes, shifts, blossoms in that surge of rose- red blood, and the skin I wore …
I watch you down the row, picking, chest close to leaves, legs close to straw, fingers red and busy, and I am glad for that hot sun distracting me from all the thoughts that have made me angry hours ago and makes you beautiful, a figure of desire, steaming with sweat, smiling up to me …
I like the look of sadness on a face because I know it, can welcome its shape against my hand and feel its smoothness. I like the way my fingers can knead its doughy cheeks and softened jaw, the way my own breathing changes to its slowed- down breath. I like that I can kneel …
Offshore I wanted a ring with a carved Indian face, or a horse hair instrument that droned, but the Gulf was beaten with oil in its gills and feathers, a desperate mix, viscous and black. Give me the horse skull, keep the credit card. Give me a great blue adventure, I’ll just stand and stare. …
Imagining Emily Dickinson in 1852 She’s thinking of song— dividing the day into eight juicy bits, into sixty little books of six folded sheets, “always in ink,” the worm of oblivion tucked neatly into one gnawed corner— polishing some lapidary idea of a frayed eternity. Her hair is red feathers—a robin’s breast (wary little bird …
There is no happy and there is no ending, just gilded loss / muddy return. Did you think the plot was pregnancy? That this season finale would resolve on a woman propped in a hospital bed, laugh track flowing into cooing? Spring beauty swaddled in her arms? Could happen / not like that. Maybe, since …