Session 185: The Psychologist Asks about My Favorite Flower
Babushka planted her sunflowers so full of seeds, they gave all of themselves away to the motherland now red with oxide ore deposits. Each dirt road & cracked field…
Session 245: The Psychologist Asks Me to Define Epigenetics
Like the Chukar Partridge of 1931— they were dying in hunting grounds: ++++++a black necklace wrapped around their white cheek & throat. Each gun shot, a force of adrenaline…
Session 154: The Psychologist Asks about Inherited Trauma
When I use a mirror ++++++See how the sting lingers ++++++++++++++++++++++++in my body. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++It mocks each lift of my arm ++++++the hiding flesh ++++++++++++jagged, pale. Each startle of skin…
To Oz
We believed in scholarship, +++++++++ignoring God, darkened living rooms, +++++++++cats winding around shins. I learned how to read in one +++++++++language at the age of four and in another…
Self Portrait as Genus Madoqua
For the first time, I am digging in the new yard I never wanted, its soil unbroken for decades, now webbed with roots from trees felled and shredded long…
Lily of the Valley
Many people, myself included, profess fondness, though once I ripped them out by the handful. What was I thinking, that afternoon and those ten years? Now when my mother…
the largest possible quantity of anything is a lifetime
—after Natalie Shapero For any thing that is in nature, a thing also that needs it. Continents apart, scientist have filmed the tender proboscides of moths feeding on birds’…
Words from a Head
Enter…the QUEEN with SUFFOLK’S head —Henry VI How long did I lie in the pool of my own life before you brought me to your lips? There was a…
Deconsecration
My new roommate’s car is a no man’s land of things that belonged to an ex-husband and his ex-wife. My roommate, the mutual neutral friend, patiently ferries these objects…
Dream of My Brother inside a Painting in Motion
—Christopher, 1974–1995 We’re walking on the interstate at night, in a downpour that leaves us dry Pushing through slashes of lacquered acrylic, pressed back by a wind I can’t…