[new thorns, 2020]   Pull the thorns from this borderline ’til barbed wire runs smooth against a palm, ’til coils of concertina fold back inside the accordion with a…

  [one for adán]   What ridiculous luck to even be born. What ridiculous luck, living long enough to sing how your father was murdered by false policemen. What ridiculous…

  Ninety-three years old, stains on either side exactly where it would have covered her hips, as if on the last day, she was making bread, staring out the window,…

  “Breastfeeding is a culturally and psychically fraught practice.” —Jennifer Friedlander, Subjectivity   We cry over spilled milk, yell shit at the elbow bump that puddles the pumped sweet gold…

  Because waking up in the hospital, handcuffed to the bed, charcoal staining my teeth, my face blue with death, was no fun. Because dressing up as a woman, learning…

  a ghost came to me once a specter shrouded in fog and stared at me through sunken mounds, lifeless caverns hollow like clay caved in by thumbs I don’t…

  Not the sense of standing alone in front of a microphone, but the adjustments of playing along with a more experienced band. Not the fear of representing an establishment,…

  What if you really had never heard it before? The throaty voice, the credibility And strength of a man who could always pick you up And bring you to…

  RPM’s throat anger over highway one. Windows cracked seals let in hiss and shiver. Nod your head to exhausts gargle with rhythm like it is song

  could have been raven scraping her beak against granite sparking or dipping crane stirring death from waters dumb floated mush on surface we circulate to shore gather sticks that…

  Hummingbirds are flying to Mexico and out of the blue a postcard, a photographic grid of recent life—you in sunglasses, a giant cactus, children in their striped suits poolside—…

  She imagines it is the day she is born. What does she want? What does it cost to be real? Isn’t the wind the breath of the earth? Will…