let’s go to my house you say, let’s go to Mom’s house, the floorboards will creak in places you don’t remember—guaranteed. And you will smell fruit where there was…

  In this habit of rotting the root fails to make do.   Wide blueblack straits spied from the shore recall this darling aporia of mine.   I’m to be…

  Heavier than age Morning has us By the throat. Why do you birds rise so early? Birds have tiny tongues A bird is a bell. Dark people in white…

  Fishermen went out to sea Fisherwomen ran after them A boy is standing in the doorway With a toy ship His eyes have dried up Deep inside them The…

  After a couple of glasses of wine they founded Mundelein in Illinois. The stars were blurry but the roads were alright, and people came anyway from all over to…

  Men with beards of dirt and fire went around the woods, swinging hammers to symbolize dominion. The marks by which they made themselves known upon the trees were all…

  The dumb thing I said keeps coming back to dismantle my house, poor dredged brain with its banging doors and hinges halved to sheer the sky. Swallows traffic the…

  Flagpole or war ship, the first purple asparagus drills its blunt rigging through the dirt. You want to say worship this— but it’s relentless, like the first time you…

  Clambering down the rocky bank she found the fish sleeping below a viridian copse of chestnuts. Somewhere inside the night she had heard their crying and it had led…

  for Wanda Coleman   If you break enough lines, eventually you have something that’ll kindle & catch like a tar paper shack or a wedding dress. A long gone…

  All’s rooted here in forgiveness— forgiver and forgiven deep   in the textured present. Pleasure rises from the dappled surface,   where, in the chaos of patterns, a woman…

  Flap from your sea grass shelter, hiss at the dog who flushes you out lumber lopsided a zigzag track like a bride dragging her heavy train. Your fractured wing…