Arthropoda Californiae
Three weeks after my husband's cremation
I cancelled the contract
with the exterminator.
Now, I share a home with arthropods.
They teach me to inhabit
hollow spaces. Their movements expand
each room. An ant scurries ...
Three weeks after my husband's cremation
I cancelled the contract
with the exterminator.
Now, I share a home with arthropods.
They teach me to inhabit
hollow spaces. Their movements expand
each room. An ant scurries ...
You have to remember the Aspen grove;
the white stalks of trees, their stuttering leaves--
the descending quiet. Vesper sparrows. ...
Think remember map our
every you every us every night every darkness
lay fear down
lay in sadness
carry this acre
taken from a map ...
Steve speaks slowly, and because he is the
Housing Association President,
he also speaks in detail, willing nothing ...
Plumes of dust. Forming. Dancing. Dissipating.
A lone dust dancer lingers. ...
Our contract was balletic—
you took from me the rabbits spooked
inside their still damp nest. ...
Never much good at judging distances
or my own physical strength, I imagine
this morning that I could swim across
the Mississippi, be in Illinois by lunch.
I can see it clear from here; the grass
you’d be surprised is just as brown yet
still it’s humming: other. O! to emerge ...
The mountain I hadn’t met lamented. It was you’re welcome; I’m sorry you don’t belong. It stood, said you don’t fit—sun hitting its middle ...
And the blades of glass prepare for dormant;
think, think in stillness, under winter's palm in
swift approach; desire now this return to dust, ...
person who is not
my person anymore.
Who keeps you anchored in the ...
Grateful for the Poplar Tree (1988)
Spring is Monolingual (2004)
Choir for Private People (2010) ...
A better-looking version of you
fleshes out the interesting impulses
you suppress inside that ...
In the urn of the lengthening day
The man who will die on my street
Is walking backward toward traffic
With his shirt on backward,
A bright orange vest, backward, and
His dirty white hair straight up
As if it were fire. ...
Although he stinks,
I love to hold his small
brokenness on my lap,
reeking teeth worn down
on a metal cage to almost
nothing, tongue that hangs ...
I.
I ate
this morning
a clementine
ate
this morning ...
To be a traitor is to trade—
Take, for example, the blue macaw
of my childhood, traded ...
February is checking my e-mail
while waiting at the drive-thru
dry cleaners to pick up my husband’s ...
I trace my finger along a warm map:
from Chiapas to Tabasco
from Tabasco to Campeche ...
Cooked, the socks, the pantry stocked,
Thanksgiving dinner for twenty.
Crab apples around the turkey on a platter I’d serve
Modeled from a photograph.
I was modeled on a photograph.
Clean floor, it was perfect.
One exact book on the table, dust it. ...