—for Betty Edwards and Betty Dodson and the ’70s  One who drew with her right brain, another self-pleasuring like mad, both easy to mock in hemp dresses and chunky necklaces.…

  He limps forward, hamstrung by the maquahuitl breeze. Or does he use such language to get sympathy?   He’s learned the name of every known disease, and claims them…

  certain kinds of wind in the blue-green disbelief of your misfortunate and persistent incursion into the unreality of bones blood sinews, the parts of the body belong to the…

  It won’t stay balled, this slick rayon. Thick thread, I’d call it, rather than fine yarn, the grey and green variegated viscose I wind. Greys of battleships and guns,…

  Ladies Union Circle, First Congregational Church, Nantucket; founded 1846; oldest, still active, ladies church group in the US.   Even before I read why they were formed, there’s my…

  Baled wool washed ashore for weeks. At first, the appearance of each bundle was sobering and macabre, but after a few days, one woman began to look forward to…

The Omar D. Conger was docked in Port Huron, Michigan when a boiler exploded. The ship was blown to pieces. A 200-lb radiator plummeted into the Falk Undertaking Parlors during…

  In one month she assembled the 1000-piece mandala mosaic on a dining room table that never saw a meal. She turned to the puzzle after he died, and I…

  Light goes a long way on its oil, while the men are still throwing tires two in a hand onto steel carts, stacking tires six high in rows, then…

  I think of her during the colony’s collapse— loyal, responsible, confused, steadfast in her hive— after her drones exit, leaving her with little bees, unable to ask:   Where…

  I am a pie weight, a mere pois, mirepoix: mix or pie? I’ll make this instead. My blind tart has a lattice to come. Dried beans replace weights in…

  In the dark, it’s safe to move around. By day you will be seen, though nature offers its disguises, the spice bush that shelters deer and on a leaf,…