Elegy with Steam
When I was sick with a head cold, my head full of pressure, my father would soak a washcloth in hot water, then ball it up, ring it out. He would open it above my head, then place it against my face like a second skin, the light around me …
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because horse is the closest i can get to it
after Jack Gilbert the horse in my mind knows the moon well enough to not need to speak to it when i try to talk to horses i watch their feet aware of their weight i try to feel my own a horse knows when …
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[SPECULUM] ENVY
I was jealous of my brother’s race car bed and jealous of my neighbor’s swing set. In a memory, a house across the street is knocked down by a yellow construction vehicle and I watch from my uncle’s lap where we sit in the attic. He has a penis and …
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Chemistry
We were side by side in chemistry. Hands touched the same beaker, still, no reaction. I remember your cheeks were warm streaks. We learned about the water cycle. I knew all about it. Rising heat and condensation changed the course of thundering, rainfall. But I didn’t brag much, when we …
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Basho’s Death Poem, New York City
Sick on a journey my dreams wander the withered fields – Basho In an old notebook were the beginnings of a poem about Basho’s last poem, the one he composed while he died. In the notes, the speaker walks from 31st Street to 17th in Manhattan and remembers Basho’s lines. …
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The Devotions
Sneezing and shiner-eyed in an entire landscape ripped by wind and today I wrestle every negative arriving my inbox while finches feast on suet, rubbing round heads to each other, to glued seed. March is and did and has just …
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I Loved Lucy
I wanted to be like Lucy—trapped on the IRT with a loving cup stuck upside down on my head— and not get mugged. To steal John Wayne’s footprints from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre without remorse, then bunk with Ethel for a whole week, mindless of half-naked show girls, the fact that …
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My Birthfather Explains His Death
Antarctica, 1979 Death is not dark as you’d imagine, but white, frozen, your name signed into the otherworld of stone and ice. It’s easy to die — one day you’re 22, offloading a Coast Guard cutter, and the next, you’re tumbling toward the snowsheet, pinned beneath it, your heart slowing …
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These Things Permit Less Gratitude
Rising like westerly smoke, the death last night was beautiful. I’ve got no reference for forests burned to ash, transformed to sky, but for now I’ve named this East Coast evening – Dimmed. Disappointment in Dad’s bloodshot grey, become Maine sunset. I shudder with the coming morning. Death may be …
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The Answer for Everything
If the body is indeed composed of mud and fossil, rib cage woven of branches clipped from tired acacia. If the moon pulls back from its seat as planned. If comets pour into one another like coffee from a carafe and the calendar becomes either all-dark or all-light. If …
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