Snow falling outside means I can’t run from the knot in my jaw muscle, that root-deep twinge where my teeth meet their pained, swollen gum. I make bread and…

  A Father   Now I’m as liberal as the next man but pink toys? A pale streak all over him. I was drinking draft beer. American as anything. It…

  The plums rained down on us, then the fireworks. We ordered a package and we took out the trash. We had pulled weeds all season, sprayed aphids, we had…

  The blankness of the animal is profound or, no, a lack of blankness, a total   clarity of feature, her color particular and unnamable against   the snow whose…

  after R.S. Gwynn   She takes the hundredth call of the day before banging her toe on the table which happens more than she cares to say. She yelps—longs…

  a sculpture by Jim Dine   Following the map, I find them— a pair of enormous black hearts,   faces, hammers, crumpled cans emerging from the surface,   as…

  At one end, my tentacles are thicker than mainmasts, fine enough at the other to pen a too-sentimental plea in your captain’s log. If you release me and I…

  is the underworld, also a prefix to prefigure damnation atop of your noun: dislike, disquiet, distance— whatever’s apart and unlovingly weird. Down in Dis, sinners get whipped and greedy…

  cats aren’t given names before experiments are concluded bc researchers are less likely to love nameless subjects.   this i understand. it remains true, even for those destined to…

  I wake up and brew the coffee And patiently wait for the gurgle, It’s like the last noise Rising off the wild boar the blood Hound smothered an Age…

  on my way through Dixieland I find a trading post some sarcophagus of time   body of bleached bones balancing a quadrilateral head with a gaping mouth that proclaims…

  I don’t eat crow. I feed crow. My crow isn’t my crow. I name the crow because I’m human and want to know how a god feels. When I…