holly and yew and rhododendron do not like the light manners and flippant quips of the larch and birch we do not welcome your double meanings they say, leaving…

  Along the coast, we lit tobacco fields. We followed a pack of bulldogs. Our private moments, of praying for each other’s bodies, were sought behind billowing tapestries. A barge…

  I cannot understand why she cannot understand why the weight of her body intrudes, and then   Wait, I was saying, what was, right, that, the load of her…

  I’ve got the portable radio tuned to the news, and they’re singing “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” its clotted lyrics sounding as though each singer in the choir made…

  You haven’t spoken to your friends in years. You’ve heard of their occupations. You’ve seen   their family photos. You want to wake up in a salt mine with…

  There is no short supply of quiet in London And all the darkness one could ever need Is there around the fair at Christmastime And nearly snuffs it out.…

  The downy woodpecker’s pointed knocking persistent as on a grandparent's back door is nothing like a hammer drill, head slamming forward and on snapping impact retracting a split moment…

  Less skin than wrapper, less concrete than gauze, the ground crumbles—floats away, cools, gray-brown dust tornados, magnetic, lost in tides. What does it matter? Broken ground folds into plains…

  A gusty wind blows snow from the east, from the north then back from the east. The snow is confused, he says, (beat) sometimes we are too. Where better…

1964   They found someone who knew someone, in Brooklyn where it would be done. They knew she wasn’t far along. He gave her cash. She went by train while…

  In the temporary trailer park made permanent, we marry, look for work, give birth. We fix up trucks or let them rust for months, propped up on blocks in…

  Old cart slumped over its wheels, a cat’s cradle of cobwebs in what was the manger—and a shanty town of pick-up-stick cages, each containing a frantic thrush. We have…