(in)different math

everything i’ve been will be different
one day. i’m hardly more than any moment,
more than anything at all. i wanted to say
before i go.

reasons not to set myself on fire

i do not mean a metaphor. i feed him salmon
in september & astonished him with weight. 
told him buy land, buy a truck, better yet,
buy nothing. watch birds & sleep 
four thousand hours. 

my husband was an animal

three crows come to my door every day. i give them peanuts.
they give me everything else—company, questions, conversation,
though it tends to stay one way. i play them buena vista social club,
they play with fire, taunting the towhees behind the rose

two poems

i listen for god's voice. demand less clarity than i used to. 
when it rains, for instance, in mid-october i ask is it raining? 

there's no way around it you have to live

it is possible to love a liar.
i have cruelty in my bones. 

secret elephant

take these aching, eating
animals all touch
hunger & mud lust shameless
astonishment

living/will

no strange bird sings alone. this is how i say you are not now, nor will 
you ever be alone. it’s true, a feeling is not a fact. i find it no less real. 
see: my disastrous attempts to feel whole in the morning. a hand 
placed on your back. 

we don't do math on sundays

i wouldn't ask was i
a dutiful daughter
but if it mattered

three poems

you ask me to be patient. i paint an old bookshelf
& remember my posture, the way blossoms become
one last thing. how some nights now you don’t sleep
even if your mind is good. even still.
there’s a bowl in the kitchen i always keep full.

don’t ever 
call me mother, ma’am, i am not yours. i belong to love,
ever hear of it over the leaf blower? ever hear of a broom?
do you even feed birds?

the poem is a threat

if they dreamt
she'd have a hard time
sitting in chairs & she’d laugh
too loud in restaurants.

if they dreamt of restaurants.

if they dreamt of a daughter one day without daughters

you will live & go on living. do you want to know why? fucks’s sake,

it’s the unburnt candles. pistachios too, six bundles of pine twined

up with a prayer regina gave you. 

higher than creation, a shadow in the dogwood 
came to carve me toward the tapestry, her wings 
around my neck. 

look. again, a raven

in the thick of a row i tell my beloved 
i would like to kick his head off. 

drugs might help but so will therapy

whatever you’re thinking, no.
smaller than that. smaller still
than a broom or a bible, a hook
to hang a hang-up. i do clean,
i comfort. open any door i can.
now i need permission or a place
to lay my head a moment
in the middle of the day.

because i needed to be useful i made myself small

i’m anxious for the sky again,
for the bone-rich red dust of it,
untumbled gem-wounded & tangled
with sage, tortoise shell underfoot
& everywhere i’ve called home.

breathe but make it bearable

the sun comes out after 18 days.
an orchid sighing on the table.


after breakfast, the botanica

you’d call me greedy any day but this one,
which was heaven-sent if heaven were
a mirror & also horribly sad sometimes
& we named the space between trees
& she had horses, star-maned, tail held high.

a brief history of everything

some evenings on earth an even darker wolf wins

klooky

Books

Selected work