In the afternoons, a girl and a woman together below a crepe of pecan trees / corniced rises, the city like a box of mud around them / seething…

  Their udders were so bloated a thorn might have slayed them. Sidestepping their own stiff tits, the cows hustled & hurtled   through the doorway, a barge of skull…

  At night I think about my father— how he no longer tends all the plants in his garden.   I wonder if in his blueprints   he draws our…

  No need for an appointment, crisis will erupt without you, another loud melancholy.   Stop picking your skin, pulling hair. Your mother would say stop that   you’ll leave…

  Your mother tells me how her own mother always talked when she did jigsaw puzzles,   pushing the pieces in and muttering “I’ll make you fit” under her breath.…

  everyone i lived with is either dead or has since been reborn. on the cape sober houses flank summer homes. august women reek of moisture and diamonds. i know…

  God it’s cold but not so cold that I would rather be asleep. I just want a little quiet and a lot of money, hallelujah. Now I am a…

  How we love: by taking another name into our mouth and swallowing it   for safekeeping. By softening at a touch the way dusk dissolves the city,   bodies…

  You know the story He became the rain Then a roaring fire Face impassive Flames licking warm & thick & ferocious The furl of his shirt in hot air…

  is a convenience: we say fish don’t feel it. catch   a trout by its lip & leave a hook there, boil   a lobster alive & think steam,…

  two crows have landed on the roof of the applebee’s, so it must be   halloween. for crows are the spookiest bird & applebee’s is the spookiest place  …