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…

  “AIDS obliges people to think of sex as having, possibly, the direst consequences: suicide. Or murder.”—Susan Sontag   The summer I danced to Donna Summer’s endless I Feel Love, ecstatic,…

  When I first take my rescue dog to the vet he gives her a treat   and she holds it gently in her mouth for the entire appointment.  …

  My therapist tells me that the stomach holds most of our feelings. She doesn’t mean what goes into it, but still I start to dream up a feast of…

  Here I am, the heavy bird, shifting high above, invisible at night, feathered black, as much a pit as any necrotic tooth in any unkempt mouth, crook-necked, scythe-headed, eyes…