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Poetry
Extrication Day
It is easy to forget your own body with a patient under your hands. In training we learned how to call the air ambulance—how to say the right words on the radio, hand off our patient to the flight crew, and keep our heads beneath the spinning helicopter blades.
September 2024
I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated
If you walk the stations of the cross, most tour guides / will politely point out the spot where they think Jesus / may have fallen or the spot where / he may have met his mother.
September 2024August 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 2024Better 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 2024Why 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 2024Aubade 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 2024The 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 2024My 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 2024My 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 2024
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