The houseleeks need a midwife
sometimes, their cabbage-babies
breaching, the stolon-cord refusing

to break. I don’t perform Caesareans;
I merely wiggle a baby foot; help
it make contact with the rocky earth.

Treen, West Cornwall — November
The barn sat at the end of a lane that had no business being called a road. Marta’s hire car scraped gorse on both sides, the branches clawing at the paintwork like something trying to pull her back. She had forgotten how narrow everything was here. How the land refused to accommodate machinery. How the sky seemed to press down on the granite as if testing it.

Most people in the community didn’t know, or care, about the planetarium at the small, private Methodist college. If they’d driven by, they might have noticed the add-on to the four-story science building on its backside with a half-moon dome roof jutting upwards toward the heavens. If it had been a human body, it would have been a mole or tumor, but the dean believed the addition would bring much needed funds, and besides, the donor who wanted to see the college add the planetarium and integrate it into the curriculum had given enough to cover the building costs. The NASA scientist alum wasn’t able to fund the inside décor, the projection machine in the center, the seating, or the multiple shows needed for a start-up, all of which required redirected funds from the Humanities.

Max Apple could see the signs in his son Sam.

While the two watched Houston Rockets basketball games together, Sam would curl up against his father during the most pivotal moments. Sam did the same thing during dramatic scenes of the British television drama The Jewel in the Crown.

I almost fell back asleep
Tossed and snugged down soft
Amid dream disquiet
Impenetrable
Implacable

Day’s debris and remnant dream
Echoes distant
Once found teeming

we are two blues
convincing the world
distance can look like devotion.

every morning
the sky lowers itself
until sailors swear
it has found the sea.

When it left, it left as it had come, through the same breach in the same levee, though weary now and sluggish from its rampage. It left like the marauding creature they now knew it had been all along, left silent slow and sure to lie again in slumber, far between the fields. It had devoured everything it could and splintered what it could not swallow…

Before jail, my life had a soundtrack.

George Michael poured through my car speakers with the windows down. The Goo Goo Dolls rode shotgun on late-night drives home. Broadway cast albums filled my kitchen while I painted. Concerts were a weekly ritual.

“There ain’t no such thing as cane sugar,” Susie assured me. Her blond bangs fell into her eyes as she pushed a kitchen chair away from the table. She had the radio tuned to the Columbus, Ohio rock station. Mick Jagger sang about tumbling dice while the chair legs groaned across the floor.
Susie boosted herself from the red vinyl cushion of the chair onto the counter. Her dirty feet wriggled before me from her spindly eight-year-old legs. .
“Mama has them all—white sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar…mol-las-is.” .
I wiped my nose with the back of my hand and sniffed. .
“Why do we need all that?”

Your papery lips press mine hungry as a predator’s beak. Our ears brush: hearing aids clack and buzz.

Pull apart

The ring was light, technically. Gold and diamonds don’t weigh much. But my hand had started noticing it everywhere.
I kept touching it under the tablecloth like it might settle into my hand if I held still long enough. The stone kept catching on the weave of the fabric — a tiny snag, over and over. Jonathan had picked it out himself. He’d told me that twice, maybe three times. The way he said it made me want to take the ring off for a second. Mom was in the kitchen. I could hear the pots knocking together. That sound always gets under my skin.

I’m almost 80 years old. And for most of those years, I’ve thought of myself as a drummer. Last week, as I watched their new owner drive away with my drums, I wondered if—without my drums—I could still call myself a drummer. And if I’m not a drummer, who am I?

After working in civil aviation engineering for so long, Sam Kenney wondered how he would adapt to having his feet on the ground and no particular place to go. Maybe that’s when it started, the drifting apart, the discovery that he and Roxie actually had very little to talk about because there was suddenly so much space to be filled due to his continual presence. Except when it came to their son, grown now and living far afield.

Upon waking, you rise into the almost-no-longer dark and step into clothing rendered black and white by the dusting of light at the heavily shaded window.

Upon waking, Carat stretches and yawns, curls into her fur-lined basket, embraces sleep again.

Perhaps it is the angle of light, turning the beige and gold carpet the same color as the dried grass outside my window that sparks this peculiar déjà vu.

Perhaps it is because that grass gently bends in the breeze, just like the grass did on the Cape Solitude Trail ten years ago on another October day when we were lost, obvious tenderfoots in an alien landscape.

I recall light spilling through
     double-story windows;
alabaster walls and high picture rails
    of the silk flowers on a grand piano,
petals fixed in perpetual bloom
in a space confined by rigid lines
s w e p t   aside by a melody shouting freedom,
lifting bodies, loosened breath

Mom’s been on her phone throughout dinner, not even pretending anymore.
Maya pushes pasta around her plate. When Aurora finally sets the phone down, Maya tries to grab a moment. .
“How’s the data center project?” .
“Mm?” Aurora rubs her eyes. “Fine. Complicated. A lot of moving parts.” .
“When’s the decision?” .
“Soon.” Aurora lifts her fork, then sets it down again. “Don’t wait up tonight. I need to finish the presentation.”

Mairead stopped in the vestibule and slid her hand above the mailboxes to locate the Binaca, once again surprised that no one had discovered her hiding place. She turned to face the street in case Toula from 2G or the super, as her grandmother called him, appeared out of nowhere. She sprayed a quick blast into her mouth, her saliva glands clenching at the sweet mint, then headed up the stairs. She pocketed the Binaca; might as well keep it for later in case Henry showed up at the bonfire.

My afternoon shift at Achnacarry has finished and I’m cycling through town along the River Ness to Starbucks, listening to a playlist that Therese has curated. I mouth the line, what the hell, buttercup, get a hobby, because Therese said it’s the best line in the song, and, even though I like the attitude with which the words, give him hell, are delivered, as always, I must defer.

Invisible waves swept through mountains and ridges
Red blinking eyes
Restless in the sky

We heard the humming
Of the fickle algorithms
We engaged with

Hi, Kate. I’m writing this in a campground as the sun sets on a mountain, Tucumcari Mountain. It’s purple! Kevin said it got its name from a Comanche word that means to wait for something to come to you. I’m waiting for Charlie and Kevin to come back from town with pizza!
Kevin gave me this iPad the night before we left Nashville. He bought it with the money he made by . . . well, that’s the reason I’m writing this.