I make supplications to the birds whose feathers were blades, lost in war. birds whose bones could no longer be found in the museum, because they flew over the…

  the day an airplane crashed, the air became heavy with the aura of mouths sore with grieving songs. I was taught to plead with the fire in my broken…

  —for M.F.O.   Sent to the front, all around me                       crack & steel fire, shouting voices— I feared no death, only sat down bullets buzzing hornets past head—            And…

  First, the remains of foil balloons littering the bank of the pond, a string once tied to a child’s wrist. Then, a pilot in uniform,   perhaps on leave,…

  When your husband is buried just a few steps away from the house how can you ever leave? When you can open the front door and say “It’s a…

  She slept with the bear to relieve herself of the burden of purity to travel the world alone with only a backpack.   Apple trees lit up with ten…

  —after Aimee Mann   I can still feel the ricochet of myself at sixteen, the windows cracked and gone down the years.   There’s no warning. I was already…

  Here, there is a great big willow that gives its shade in the summer. Wilted little leaves tumble into my lap. I bury the dry bodies of ants. I…

  What does it mean to leave a colony? A penguin is heading toward the mountains, directionless, slow and strange. Pearlwort smashed under heavy snow, he follows the grey light…

  We may not have learned what a verb was but we learned what a noncount noun was. We may have forgotten what a noncount noun was but we learned…

  Our directions said take exit 31 or 33 so we of course took 32 and drove off the map into thin gray roads, slanting drizzle, pairs of Rottweilers guarding…

  In Cambridge, I bought a Passport to the Moon, with a large map from 1679 drawn by Giandomenico Cassini, & issued by the Lunar Ministry of Solar System &…