May− thunder was shaking the house
Read MoreManure scented grass girds the breeze slipping through
a slit of window, a mere two inches that I open
to breathe my first bit of fresh air since October last year.
I cannot tell you how many pie-sweet cherries covered the grass—blanket blood-spotted.
Read MoreThe river was
as the river is
Yesterday, the plumber came
and unearthed a pound of hair
Each morning Willis plays checkers
with Eddie, the meth addict forty days clean
and she becomes the nothing
the world wanted from her.
I press my ear against the earth
for the usual reasons: to fathom
ant scrabble, the sibilance of suckling
roots, the stoic decomposition
of underlying stones, groundwater abiding.
Read MoreIndeed I cling to the morning newspaper,
its relatively ancient news administered in ink
upon the crinolines of many dead trees,
like the postmortem of a marriage
those in the know already know has ended in divorce.
Read MoreFrom a quarter mile away,
the notes of the nearest neighbor’s bamboo
wind chime arrive from time to time.
Read MoreInto the birdbath’s frozen mirror,
you stare down a nose of red clay
as if—past mossy five o’clock-shadow,
your curls under snow—
you can’t see
someone just carved from marble,
and stupid with it
Read MoreThis weight on my chest,
this sullen sadness—tell me, Doctor,
how I can lift it up and set it down.
Read More