Poetry

All Night I Dreamed Growing up my motherhad an abortion rights stickeron the front door of our suburbanraised ranch. Red shingles and blackshutters. Inside me my rightswere a tight fist. I would not openmy fingers no matter how hardboys and…

In Good HealthThe stripe across my neck makes me afraid of my body. I sip Tylenol,check the pulse in my temple the color of my tongue. You are unmoved by the litany of afflicting ailments. I name the long, many-lettered…

I moved to New York for an ideaanimated by imagery:red and yellow leaves, snow, and lots of walking.Blue mittens and bloated coatsresembling pastry. And then six months later:bare shoulders, grass roaring with bugs.On my last Sunday in California, I stood…

*** *** it is finally spring & i am tending your garden& you are gone. it is unfair of deathto ask so many necessary questions,then to pry the answers from uslike warped wood bending away from itself.you are gone &…

BEFORE THE AFTERLIFE Early in our love,we sit in the Swan Room,ceilings high as a tomb,blood-heavy curtains,clusters of moon lamps.Fake swans lurkeverywhere. Overdirty martinis, cloudy vialsof brine, we revealour death plans:ashes for both.Water, I say,my body scatteredinto sea or fjord.It…

Migration for Mimi this march the barn swallows will return packing their mud nest under the eaves gold-chested they dash among the limbs of an oak tree, fork tails splitting the sky whistle & click their little song transports me…

“It was birthing / children that made me think about danger and dying.”

a chainsaw made for her and yours The Chainsaw was invented by Scottish scientists John Aitken and James Jeffray who created a hand cranked “Aitken’s flexible chainsaw”, to split the pubic bone from women in difficult labor and remove the…