Aotearoa, since the Oligocene Drowning Event, has been overrun by ground parrots, improbable weta, bats that scoot on their bellies, daughters in a state of ecological release, free from ancestral…

  If he were in hospital, unable to speak, I would hold his hand, creature to creature. I’d do that for anyone. Rough brush of fingerprints. Hello, I’m sorry to…

  there’s nothing in the etiquette guides for a marriage                    so short so I wake early on a Saturday, bring home Subway                        the egg whites because I want…

I opened the door but you did not enter.   It is easiest to blame the angel. Fact: a woman who walks beneath its outstretched wings will miscarry.   There…

- in memory of Kurt Brown It shows tremendous presence without a lot of weight, this wine from Côte-Rôtie,   this supermodel from Marseille who cheats at poker, legs better…

The Red Leaf was of the blood of Christ—“Advice to Little Children,” The New-England Primer, 1727   Berries of Fever-bush thrive incarnadine incarnate— though the first hard Frost has kissed Verbena, Hyssop,…

  North of Timber Management Solutions, amid the gaping   concentric sun-circuitry of truncated fir-stumps, fireweed flourishes,   fireweed crackles like the feedback of a sun-struck accord.   Fireweed, fireweed,…

  Not the Book of Wonders, not the Way, not the Word,   but crying in Wilderness, Make ready, the mightier Text is yet to come—   I blaze the…

  Two by two the kernels hit the metal pail, blue stalks stiff as thin batons stripped green braids from yellow tails,   nightshade cast in shadows between fronds. They…

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  After 90—a little bird-like cocking of her head to gather what she could from the periphery.   Her eager pupilage, dulled.   Retinas—their rites by rote, their prayers for…

  Madame Maman at the kitchen table, in turban and curlers,   reading the cards. Clucks and sighs suggest my stint on earth gets grim.   She won’t say how…