One, shadow-faced, gazes at the food, mouthpiece fallen from his slice-of-life lips. Three silver charms   dangle à la beads of sweat from his hat. It’s hot as a…

  After a long time staring into the cliffs you finally said, I think that when a stone looks at Medusa it just becomes more comfortable in its own body.…

  I dreamed of you last night, a dream you, an almost you. We were driving in that old blue car I used to have, except that it was green…

  New Year’s Day and the big reeds bowing over the stream’s headlong, white churn, only one back-flowing current glazing and glazing a black smooth stone, and you said This…

  Suddenly it was a storm and insects / a pet cage tumbling in the rain.   One morning they rose to find the lobster / had sheared away the…

  In the afternoons, a girl and a woman together below a crepe of pecan trees / corniced rises, the city like a box of mud around them / seething…

  Their udders were so bloated a thorn might have slayed them. Sidestepping their own stiff tits, the cows hustled & hurtled   through the doorway, a barge of skull…

  At night I think about my father— how he no longer tends all the plants in his garden.   I wonder if in his blueprints   he draws our…

  No need for an appointment, crisis will erupt without you, another loud melancholy.   Stop picking your skin, pulling hair. Your mother would say stop that   you’ll leave…

  Your mother tells me how her own mother always talked when she did jigsaw puzzles,   pushing the pieces in and muttering “I’ll make you fit” under her breath.…

  everyone i lived with is either dead or has since been reborn. on the cape sober houses flank summer homes. august women reek of moisture and diamonds. i know…

  God it’s cold but not so cold that I would rather be asleep. I just want a little quiet and a lot of money, hallelujah. Now I am a…