Every time I hear a gunshot I feel it in the back of my teeth as a shiver,   a silver ache. Maybe it’s from the many years of…

  after “View of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer” by Vincent Van Gogh, 1888   White wash, black thatch, tiles of tangerine, marigold, ginger—saffron cathedral, and this patch before us—greens, blues, purples, a woman…

  gone through the back door late to let out the dogs I would not have found the ten-point buck pilfering the bird feeder, stunned as I with his hungry…

  My nature poem has air conditioning, but no line breaks. My nature poem doesn’t care what your nature poem thinks; that is its nature. Though it has never met…

  in honor of Stewart   “Art, useless as tits on a boar.” —Diane Seuss   A poet once said that a poem is a synapse, the space between neurons;…

  begins with the sight of someone else’s eyes, voice pulled taut   by a ribbon of smoke, apples of cheeks reddened like seawater   in the evening light. A…

  “Our meat was cold.” “He simply smelt it and walked away.” “Like stepping into a house of horrors.” “The smoke flavor haunted me 4 days after my visit.” “Mother…

  This is not a pipe, said surrealist painter Magritte about his painting. It looks like a pipe, convinces you, makes you believe that it is a pipe, but you…

  Her name is Anabel. A Turkification of the foreign name “Annabel.” Not ten minutes ago, Anabel pulled me out of the way as the bumper of a bus grazed…

  She came to me three times last night. Padded across the carpet +++and hardwood and in a voice so clear she sounded like fresh river water said, +++Mama, I’m…

  The property line widened like a spreading stain. Drank ink and swelled into map. The line held the land like an unborn child. Then: pavement crawled forward. Crawled away.…

  Deep in the caverns of the memory unit, my grandfather’s trying to describe what time feels like. It’s a square on a piece of paper, he says, it’s shaped…