Everything has been remodeled about motherhood. I should know, I am not one. A mother, that is. I have one, like we all do, or did, at the time…

  Open me. Split me down the seam that stretches just above my collar bones to my navel and down to the seam of my hem. Divide me and you…

  On a warm spring that gorged on soil, spewed tornadoes like seeds, I painted my nails blue, the color of Alice’s dress, and cycled at night to the older…

  Because I want to be a wolf; because the earth smells of sinew and green. Because his hair was made of corn dust and cloud and I wanted to…

  February 4, 2020, Lake Michigan   She is dark coat and seed, blonde shock into the wind, the earth rounding a bend of sand to greet her, lift a…

  Because we didn’t talk about [    ]   Because Mom only said I know what you’re doing            when the shower’s head was left pulsing. Because I knew that…

  but it’s different than the usual one where I’ve been drinking and remember quite suddenly, that I’m very   very round. Where it’s all confusion and shame until the…

  If I dream a bird on the floor sick or injured, maybe able to be gathered in a towel and taken somewhere to somebody—   once day comes and…

  I know, because I’ve been there and seen it myself, where he dragged each drawer out of his dresser into the backyard and flung his clothes into an empty…

  In your hospital room we fall in love again with the sky, its spring cloudscape to the west, its vast expanse, variation on the theme of nebula.   The…

  —after The Botany of Desire   My sweet earthnut, I was monoculture when the last bear of matrimony crunched   down my crabbed heart and shat out the seeds,…