God Instructs Eve
Whatever happens, don’t forget
to love this self I’ve given you. Praise
the backs of your hands, taut, the wells of their flexing.
Praise this deft thumb. The thumbnail’s perfect moon.
Remember your broad forehead, the dark brows, the way they like
to be stroked against the grain. Praise this belly,
slack, soft; praise it folding blindly over itself
as you sit, or flattening, or pressing against another body.
Love the tongue I made for you, its celebrations;
the ears with their stubborn cartilage of whorls.
Praise these rough ankles, wide, reliable; the warm
curves of your back; the knees, broad, rounded, unafraid.
Love these arms, their willingness.
Love this slim nape. The muscle of it.
Its ignorant strength, the way it bends to carry
the weight of the world on your unpracticed shoulders.
Comstock Review, Lucky
The Same Rain
Everything catches your attention here:
green moss-glow on granite. Wild violets.
Trees planted or sprung, fern, red trillium,
astonishments that root you at each turn,
begging for the camera--
Banners and flags throng the statehouse steps
an hour south, signs handpainted with blue globes.
Your friends, and theirs, and theirs, singing, waving,
heartfelt hundreds you don’t know.
Fern, pine. Sudden quince. It can’t come with you, but
you click and click as if you could keep this feeling,
this leaping at the offering, earthly unearthly pink gone red,
foretaste of fruits you already want to come back for.
Water and blossoms fall bright against thorns.
You look up, lift your face, even as you zip your jacket
to the same rain that’s opened these tight blooms,
the slaking we were waiting for all season…
Later you’ll hear about the thunderburst downtown--
how umbrellas lifted, how some huddled under, or
wrapped themselves in their stripes and stars and slogans--
and you’ll recall the smell of drops darkening
hot pavement, brick, stone steps. Crush of shoulders
against statehouse pillars, helmeted squads surrounding.
At home, you dig into your pocket for the phone;
wet petals fill your fingers.
Willows Wept Review
Hope Speaks to Me
I am the chestnut
with leaves like hands. I
am the reaching branches.
Come. Don’t you
already know me?
The lapped bark. Rootsap rising.
The pale green shell
with its perfect horns.
I am the hard
dark satin heart
that hurtles toward you.
Awakenings
What I Learn Watching You
for Eve
Some people love all the colors, not only the safe ones.
Even orange. Scar of rust, shrill neon strobe…
The color that demands, that can’t help itself--
Roe. Iodine. Wildfire haze. Some people don’t turn away
from what spreads. What lingers. The cut tree’s
brilliant fungus. Some people kneel to touch.
To love a color that doesn’t apologize.
Fluorescent lure, the rippled gasp of gills.
The oriole we hush for; streak of hawk.
Some people hold an openness
to both burn and beauty. To the daylily
flaring and guttering. To translate pain.
Oilslick on asphalt. Ranks of cones narrowing the road.
Some people aren’t afraid to love all
the colors. Some people.
Some people aren’t afraid to love.
Cider Press Review
Sit Back, Relax
I love the popcorn, scrape of hands
in greased cartons... Fucking genius. The kind of thing
I can’t say—another problem
my brothers don’t have, like high heels, fear
of interrupting, or five kinds of lotion
(face, hand, foot, body, cuticle)… This is so
not a chick flick. Like the inability
to tune out someone else’s baby cranking
three rows back. It’s tempting to change seats.
Just move up front. But not behind
a tall guy. They don’t dread craned necks,
nightsweats, salesmen who flirt… No way.
Just trade in the patience, the need
to smile—the need? Forget it.
Yes, it’s easy to stand up--
sink into an aisle seat, legs apart,
take up all the air. You think
I should apologize, you can think again.
Fieldstone Review
Never
She can nevernever be happy now, our daughter says, because
we let the mouse go. Under the pines, at the park, while she
was at school. Didn’t we know she was going to tame it
in a cardboard box? Feed it saltine crumbs? Now everything’s
ruined. She can’t hush, she can’t calm down, what if it
had babies? They’ll be freezing down in the basement, with no
mother to return. They’ll be waiting and waiting and waiting.
We’ve ruined everything. She can never love us again.
Gray shuddering back, white paws, bright eye.
Cider Press Review
If You Wake
to morning after morning, with
or without sun, eyes open, lungs
rising and falling no matter
what you intend or fail at,
the season settled like ice
into the room you wake in--
if you can throw back covers, feel
the warm and cool of the folds,
rub the small grit from your eyes--
presume the nerves will keep firing
today at least. Presume someone
or something still can use you--
your work, or words, or breath. Presume
the world’s not done with you.
Presume you too belong.
Comstock Review, What We Don't Know We Know
Whatever happens, don’t forget
to love this self I’ve given you. Praise
the backs of your hands, taut, the wells of their flexing.
Praise this deft thumb. The thumbnail’s perfect moon.
Remember your broad forehead, the dark brows, the way they like
to be stroked against the grain. Praise this belly,
slack, soft; praise it folding blindly over itself
as you sit, or flattening, or pressing against another body.
Love the tongue I made for you, its celebrations;
the ears with their stubborn cartilage of whorls.
Praise these rough ankles, wide, reliable; the warm
curves of your back; the knees, broad, rounded, unafraid.
Love these arms, their willingness.
Love this slim nape. The muscle of it.
Its ignorant strength, the way it bends to carry
the weight of the world on your unpracticed shoulders.
Comstock Review, Lucky
The Same Rain
Everything catches your attention here:
green moss-glow on granite. Wild violets.
Trees planted or sprung, fern, red trillium,
astonishments that root you at each turn,
begging for the camera--
Banners and flags throng the statehouse steps
an hour south, signs handpainted with blue globes.
Your friends, and theirs, and theirs, singing, waving,
heartfelt hundreds you don’t know.
Fern, pine. Sudden quince. It can’t come with you, but
you click and click as if you could keep this feeling,
this leaping at the offering, earthly unearthly pink gone red,
foretaste of fruits you already want to come back for.
Water and blossoms fall bright against thorns.
You look up, lift your face, even as you zip your jacket
to the same rain that’s opened these tight blooms,
the slaking we were waiting for all season…
Later you’ll hear about the thunderburst downtown--
how umbrellas lifted, how some huddled under, or
wrapped themselves in their stripes and stars and slogans--
and you’ll recall the smell of drops darkening
hot pavement, brick, stone steps. Crush of shoulders
against statehouse pillars, helmeted squads surrounding.
At home, you dig into your pocket for the phone;
wet petals fill your fingers.
Willows Wept Review
Hope Speaks to Me
I am the chestnut
with leaves like hands. I
am the reaching branches.
Come. Don’t you
already know me?
The lapped bark. Rootsap rising.
The pale green shell
with its perfect horns.
I am the hard
dark satin heart
that hurtles toward you.
Awakenings
What I Learn Watching You
for Eve
Some people love all the colors, not only the safe ones.
Even orange. Scar of rust, shrill neon strobe…
The color that demands, that can’t help itself--
Roe. Iodine. Wildfire haze. Some people don’t turn away
from what spreads. What lingers. The cut tree’s
brilliant fungus. Some people kneel to touch.
To love a color that doesn’t apologize.
Fluorescent lure, the rippled gasp of gills.
The oriole we hush for; streak of hawk.
Some people hold an openness
to both burn and beauty. To the daylily
flaring and guttering. To translate pain.
Oilslick on asphalt. Ranks of cones narrowing the road.
Some people aren’t afraid to love all
the colors. Some people.
Some people aren’t afraid to love.
Cider Press Review
Sit Back, Relax
I love the popcorn, scrape of hands
in greased cartons... Fucking genius. The kind of thing
I can’t say—another problem
my brothers don’t have, like high heels, fear
of interrupting, or five kinds of lotion
(face, hand, foot, body, cuticle)… This is so
not a chick flick. Like the inability
to tune out someone else’s baby cranking
three rows back. It’s tempting to change seats.
Just move up front. But not behind
a tall guy. They don’t dread craned necks,
nightsweats, salesmen who flirt… No way.
Just trade in the patience, the need
to smile—the need? Forget it.
Yes, it’s easy to stand up--
sink into an aisle seat, legs apart,
take up all the air. You think
I should apologize, you can think again.
Fieldstone Review
Never
She can nevernever be happy now, our daughter says, because
we let the mouse go. Under the pines, at the park, while she
was at school. Didn’t we know she was going to tame it
in a cardboard box? Feed it saltine crumbs? Now everything’s
ruined. She can’t hush, she can’t calm down, what if it
had babies? They’ll be freezing down in the basement, with no
mother to return. They’ll be waiting and waiting and waiting.
We’ve ruined everything. She can never love us again.
Gray shuddering back, white paws, bright eye.
Cider Press Review
If You Wake
to morning after morning, with
or without sun, eyes open, lungs
rising and falling no matter
what you intend or fail at,
the season settled like ice
into the room you wake in--
if you can throw back covers, feel
the warm and cool of the folds,
rub the small grit from your eyes--
presume the nerves will keep firing
today at least. Presume someone
or something still can use you--
your work, or words, or breath. Presume
the world’s not done with you.
Presume you too belong.
Comstock Review, What We Don't Know We Know
