Poetry

I baby but do not cry. At night, I wander the shores looking for my tears in the sand. My footprints, just skid marks in a desert

tumbling into our ears again. The genealogy of sugarcane

I’m here to return a car I never rented. The clerk doesn’t ask questions his face already shaped by other people’s lies.

to measure the dark, to measure the lemon,the frost, crackthe swivel in the cart at rest, in the darkmarooned leaves mulch beneath snowso no now owna wood slab divorced from a treedisplays bare insidesforthright as an organwith no coveringbald without…

I am learning that one major function of a child’s life is forward movement. How lucky, to get to ride the coattails of unhindered propulsion.

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.”