from The Neighbour My dad was such a liar.       It was all about perception, I had to be a refined lady             I never carried myself like a slut, […]

CHERRIES The woman standing in the Whole Foods aisle over the pyramid of fruit, neatly arranged under glossy lights, watched me drop a handful into a paper bag, said how […]

It’s narrow . . . It’s narrow, and no room For error—I zig And zag through The treacherous channel. What fool said joy Is less risky than grief? My ship […]

The last love poem I will ever write…. Will contain an invention for turning ant’s tears Into hummingbird wings. It will hold every Elegy the night sky ever wrote for […]

A Song of What Happens If I wrote in a short story Or novel that when my father Was young, about thirteen, He and his best friend Stole a rifle […]

              Song of Aftermath Standing now, in a place Scrubbed raw by flood. I, who sought neither Rapture nor fracture. Now the question is: […]

Sorrow is good; Tears are good. But too much Grief erodes. What if all The soft soil Washes away And only hard Furrows remain? Then what? Then what can grow […]

Note to self: remember What Emerson said of Thoreau— That he loved the low In nature: Muskrats And crickets, suckers And frogs. Not stars. Songs of the carnal, Songs of […]

I sometimes think art is useless in the face of extreme suffering, but then I remember Miklos Radnoti, Paul Celan, Anna Akhmatova, or Mandelstam—and I bow my head (to them) […]

What a journey I had this morning! It started with finding a Hirschfield quote in the 2012 book A God in the House: …poetry exists in part to enlarge us, […]