Poetry

The mourning after he left was long and insistent draping itself over every load of laundry and unlaced shoe surfacing in half-drunk cups of tepid tea and resting in uninterrupted…

One day I stopped trying, frying, and buying goods for the house. I stepped back from countertops, let the crumbs wilt, and listened from behind walls to the sounds of…

Of course, I believe that in this land, where storks nesting in chimneys guarantee a family good luck, she will be unchanged: eighteen, still with skinny wrists, blond hair that…

On the day I finally outlive your days, I’ll wake to leaf fire, sunlight, peeling eucalyptus and room enough to drown in. But I’ll still float above your kitchen-talk in…

eyes closed in the arc,               key of night’s                chalkboard –               the arc…

Her hair, that halo of red gold curls, has thickened, coarsened, lost its baby fineness, and the sweet smell of childhood that clung to her clothes has just about vanished.…

Why is it the things you never think about at four in the afternoon consume you at 4 a.m.? For instance why am I lying here just after the newspaper…

I turn to ask Morgan, my six-year-old, to stop chewing on his shirt, and he asks me for the car keys, and I wake up on the floor next to…

This strange dusk at noon, masking a fire that can sear our vision with its intensity, the radio warning us to shield our eyes. It is noon for you also,…

your blue linoleum shines with tears all day your fan whirls on a long stick you have nailed Truman Capote to your outhouse wall your white dress is spotted with…

“It’s rare”, my friend explains, tuberous red, brilliant against brown duff, pushing up under the green pines. I dream it’s crammed in a glass vase on the kitchen table. Scarlet…