February 4, 2020, Lake Michigan   She is dark coat and seed, blonde shock into the wind, the earth rounding a bend of sand to greet her, lift a…

  Because we didn’t talk about [    ]   Because Mom only said I know what you’re doing            when the shower’s head was left pulsing. Because I knew that…

  but it’s different than the usual one where I’ve been drinking and remember quite suddenly, that I’m very   very round. Where it’s all confusion and shame until the…

  If I dream a bird on the floor sick or injured, maybe able to be gathered in a towel and taken somewhere to somebody—   once day comes and…

  I know, because I’ve been there and seen it myself, where he dragged each drawer out of his dresser into the backyard and flung his clothes into an empty…

  In your hospital room we fall in love again with the sky, its spring cloudscape to the west, its vast expanse, variation on the theme of nebula.   The…

  —after The Botany of Desire   My sweet earthnut, I was monoculture when the last bear of matrimony crunched   down my crabbed heart and shat out the seeds,…

  Everyone I know who’s been divorced says on her wedding day, she knew. Which is lucky for me, I’ve always known nothing.   When I ask the Ouija board…

  when I steam brown rice I remember you in the smell   when I peel purple onions I hold a wooden matchstick between my teeth   you told me…

  On the moon at noon the sky is black. You can read through closed eyes but six feet above your head the nothing sits munching little stars, microgreens to…

  Before, I thought unrest was a house to move through. And tomorrow, and the after-days: a yellow window blinking on and off from the smeared street, a movement in…

  Redwing shouldering home, shouldering far from home, I know not but his red-capped sleeves, his epaulets. I know not but his beak, his black bird tongue, spool of him…