Noun 1. a musical instrument of the viol family Simple enough. It sleeps in its box the way a fox might sleep in a hole. 2. violin Not exactly. A…

  Your mom’s been up all night with Marlboros we bought, and their smoke snakes through her hidden closet vent to hang above your sleeping head. At dawn, I tiptoe…

I was told that one of the old gods appeared to my mother as a turkey while she planted hyacinths at her parents’ graves. He chased her out of the…

    At the Poetry Center in 1971, B.F. Skinner, founder of radical behaviorism, responded to a poem called “Verbal Behavior,” named after his book that says we should remember…

I need to tell you + this is Maine. The woman prattling incessantly next to me + with a smoky New England cackle blotting out her husband John’s one-word encouragements,…

  +++ for Chen Chen A fathom used to mean the furthest distance a person could reach. A yawn—like chasm, chaos, or hiatus—is another name for space. Chiasma: inside the…

  • One of my dad’s favorite jokes starts like this: “I can’t believe they got back together after all that shit!” • Some nights he just left, and when…

    Like a curse, I am drawn to my bookshelf, to the title page of Motherless Brooklyn. Here, I find your name and number written in the left- hand…

Around fullness you barely knew from noon the late light falling in cinched with red southing shadows ++ along a yard ++ maybe mine in the hardening dim ++ a…

  +++ some women are born in flight a first flush summer in memory it seemed to have never rained you were warm like the walkways red under chinaberries swollen…

    Single white alienated female seeking a companion to stroll the dark night of her soul. Be advised, this is not a sexcapade. And aside from my knack for…

  The woodpecker that ran into my window is dead If only I knew taxidermy, I could bring it back to life Up close, each feather looks hand-carved, like the…