Poetry |
“First Miracle,” “The Kind Stepmother” and “May Snow”
“I wanted everyone / to be unhappy, / like Grandfather Lenin who, obviously, wanted / everyone to be happy, / for when all is said and done we wanted the same thing: / fairness …”
Poetry |
“Smoke Day”
“There’s a saying about time when everything is on fire. / The morning entirely blue except one pink slash right where it all starts up.”
Poetry |
“Fantasies in ’56“
“The real goal for me was to turn into Hank: / big arms, a tattoo, and giggly housewives / who blushed and spluttered as I filled up their tanks.”
Poetry |
“Heaven’s Breath” and “Easter Basket”
“I am thinking about the 30 million / living things balanced on a person’s / shoulders in a precarious column 1000 / meters high. Don’t ask me where / I got that fact but it’s a fact and I saw it.”
Poetry |
“[Elegy for My Uncle] or [Oubliette: craniosynostosis]” “[Elegy for My Uncle with Dime Store Turtle and a Scrawl of Desire]” & [Elegy for My Uncle with a Childhood in it]
“I feared it when I had a daughter but she’s okay and I’m okay / and it’s just that an AI is stroking us to death in this primal world // I’m glad / he never knew that …”
Poetry |
“wish” and four untitled poems
“wandering on both ends of the world / my body is a channel / one end flowing toward a black ocean / the other tied with a bright ribbon of sunlight”
Poetry |
“neap tide — spring”
“what if an old wife is what / is necessary to predict the weather // dried sugar kelp can predict the weather / for example — the rocks here winter / woven with it …”
Poetry |
“His Shaving Cuts” “Practice” and “Without You”
“First pretzels I’ve eaten without you — / leg cramps, so our son said they’d help, / the salt, which people called me in contrast / to sweet you …”
Poetry |
“Shipwreck — the ark” and “Selva oscura”
“& the night says thank you to the trees with abundant shadow / & sleep requires humans to double down on darkness / & the trees are prison bars / & humans are afraid to enter there”
Poetry |
“Biopic” and “Resting Bitch Face”
“And I pause here to tip my honeyed wine // to Sappho, her lost words ever on my mind. Sappho, / another straight-mouthed beauty, her poetry / so revered her face was stamped on coins.”
Poetry |
“Unaccompanied Minors” and “August From My Desk”
“Every day, across borders, behind walls / Other mothers sigh and begin walking / Their children down the early road / Into the unknown, off to living other lives.”
Poetry |
“Canticle of the New Order”
“… if you make mistakes / let them come in waves / in cookie trays champagne / glasses music boxes / unmade beds …”
Poetry |
“Hungry”
“… someone says / ground pork / napa cabbage, / and another pushes / a highchair up close / for a child in a pink T-shirt …”
Poetry |
“Bodies”
“And what’s the deep meaning of body / fragility? Transience of all things? Supremacy / of soul? Need for pleasure to counter pain?”