Aubade with Yellow-Crowned Night Heron

poetry
  A young one, out late— still hunting in the saltmarsh. Tall and long-necked, this one— not hunched in stalk. To stay up nights, gulp your fill of darkness and…

Limelight

poetry
  A lime on a branch looks like a 3D leaf, a surprise, a bonus. To find a lime below another lime is sublime. The painter carries a lime from…

Hospital in Time of Covid

poetry
  Ice on my stomach wounds, a heavy cough blanket over the ice— a kind of tough-love sandwich. In this cold dry room, I can only move my head and…

Improvisation on Djembe

poetry
  Yours are not the desperate pounds of fists against a homeless door, ++++++says the drum, nor the hollowed promise behind it. When you came to me your palms were…

Brain [Zaps]

poetry
  Wake up There’s still time There’s still the gauzy light through the blinds Can you hear the mourning doves outside? There’s a song you’re not singing and I know…

Fear Moves Toward a Blackout

poetry
  after Eduardo C. Corral Don’t look straight at the sun, fear says. Is that cancerous? fear asks. Unafraid, fear sneaks in the side door. I feed fear a treat,…

Her Brother

poetry
  I call my aunt who is ninety-six, the only one still with us, all her siblings now passed. She can’t hear me, refuses aids she says hiss with static,…

Wolf Lichen

poetry
  I don’t know how you got your name, little green ball of fuzz, but I like imagining you howling at the moon as you cling to the trunk of…

Night-ducks

poetry
  The night is a secret ware— I’m sold. Its ceramic cheek browns to blue. Night-ducks un-repair the water, how I broke too its surface, not even an hour ago.…

Discipline

poetry
  The compost goes to maggots, the birdbath births mosquitoes, the fig falls into your hand light as foam. Tomatoes suck the soil raw, the basil goes to seed, then…

Broken Sonnet #5

poetry
  Half the stars we see have died. the sun bear knows this. he has read the poems. the tides may or may not be at the command of the…

On Having Chosen Childlessness

poetry
  I face the clot of horizon, feet sunk deeper ++in every wake, to consider the ocean. How ++++she moves—laps forward. The whole going nowhere. Her body lifts. Foil ++from…