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Poetry
Poetry
August at Forty-Three
For six years we’ve taken no precautions / and my body has made no / third baby, nor have we plotted / to create another life, content / to let nature do what it would
August 2024Poetry
Better Yet
Wanting to go beyond where I’ve already been: / Isn’t that supposed to be a good thing to do? / Then why would I rather go all the way back to the day / before I was born?
August 2024Poetry
Why I Respect the Dog
The dog weighs twelve pounds / and uses them as she pleases. / The king-size bed is not big enough. / Sleep enabler, stretch-monger, / when she wants to be touched, / she offers up the narrow white arc / of her belly. When a loud face / crowds her, she growls. Or, depending / on the weather, the time, the face, /she doesn’t.
July 2024Poetry
Aubade with Calf
So early the mist remains hammocked / between hills. My hand / palms a calf’s muzzle. // We are two beings / drawn together by instinct. By this definition, / I have found the one.
July 2024Poetry
The Wisdom Package
I ask the youngish eye doctor why my eyes itch / and burn and why new floaty bits / of paramecium-shaped debris swim // through my view each day
June 2024Poetry
My Mother’s Disease Introduces Me to My Mother
My mother’s disease wants / to know my name. // My mother’s disease takes / me in // with my mother’s eyes.
June 2024Poetry
My Father Not the Sky
My dad used to wake us up at 5 AM on Sundays / with the vacuum cleaner, saying, Get out of bed, / the day is wasting, and then he’d be asleep on the couch // by nine, just as the sun began to lift its head / over the houses.
June 2024Poetry
Happysad
Gobbling tortilla chips with gleeful abandon, I forget to chew, and one triangle catches in my throat. Instantaneous panic. Sudden, deep, mammalian fear.
May 2024Poetry
Dear Woman Who Tried to Pick Me Up at a Hollywood Club in 1998
What if I’d said yes? Imagine I go home with you that night, / when I’m twenty, and when we wake up in the morning, / you ask, You know you snore? You laugh at my / nighttime retainer, which I’ll wear for the rest of my life, and say, You look hot.
May 2024Poetry
In the Freezer
she kept pig haunches, / the shoulder joints of cows, / buffalo neck and guts, / all stuck to the ziplock bags. / If anyone ever asked, / Mother simply laughed.
May 2024
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