Poetry |
“Pheasants”
“… waiting for the grass / to quiver, waiting for them to appear / in the near clearing, / the brazen male, the subtler female, / three bronze chicks behind …”
Poetry |
“The In-Between” and “Manus Miraculum”
“I sleep in the top car / of a broken ferris wheel — // I race away from the sun / and feel free in the fog …”
Poetry |
“Host,” “Vacation Dinner” & “Yoga Revolution”
“Noticing something different / than the rest, dark spot on my bikini line, / I killed the shower / to get a good look, tried to brush it off, / but it was stuck.”
Poetry |
“Collective Effervescence”
“… the lifeless laptop screen packed with / opaque square frames or off-tinted faces — / the skittish connections — Zooming in for poetry / class — sometimes just a nose or an eyeball / appearing …”
Poetry |
“Science Matters” & “Going Through”
“I can’t remember what kind of car came next / I was starting to move into my own constellation / & my sister got married & had children who now / Have children & my parents flew past Andromeda …”
Poetry |
“Matches Ghazal”
“Small talk, wine, homemade ragù, more wine, then surrender, lubricant, your bed / a mattress on the floor. Locked bodies confuse the moves made in a tango and a match.”
Poetry |
“To the man in the pickup truck who screamed obscenities at my 15-year old sister,” “Full Moon and a Storm Coming, You Tell Me” & “Winter”
“Your grandma used to call them hurrycanes / in her foamy Cape Cod accent. She knew / the slower the storm, the greater the loss.”
Poetry |
“Tragedy By the Sea”
“… & knowing we’ll be bored with age / one day & want / to see how time played / Us, to take/ a picture.”
Poetry |
“To Gratitude” & “Leaves of Him”
“You secure his weight to my mastitic chest for our forty-third bus ride / from hospital to home. / You coat his saliva rash with petroleum jelly, coax him to eat a smashed avocado / and swaddle him, too.”
Poetry |
“The Problem of Foliage”
“The human approach, to do one’s utter best / to identify, number, and trace the shape of each / as far as the picture extends (to keep the picture small) …”
Poetry |
“1970”
“The children wrote to soldiers in Vietnam / to learn about language arts and geography. / The popular girl’s pen pal wrote back, sent gifts, / strode into Room 6 once on leave, all camouflage / and smiles.”
Poetry |
“Another Green World” and “Wild”
“Each room you dwell in / becomes a Louvre of ruthless vanity, / plush dark chamber of alien secrecy.”
Poetry |
“Dream Poem” and “Cinnamon”
“You really murdered that sestina / says the officer questioning an MFA candidate / while leafing through his thesis. / Maybe, says Good Cop, sitting on his desk, / but you could still save it if you’d just / put it in your own words.”
Poetry |
“Hyperemesis Gravidarum” and “While I Was Out”
“… never saw the contours / of the larval life form waxing in your womb, / a pitiable spineless lone crescent sardine / of a half-written girl …”
Poetry |
from the “Little Soul” series
“Little Soul has no ancestral memory / but knows, thanks to MyHeritage, its DNA / is pure Ashkenazi, a lineage of wanderers / and damp wool, shtetls, ghettos …”