whispers the woman sitting next to me.
I’ve seen her here before–drinking alone,
her skin heavy with loss.
This close, the taste of her regret is pungent,
and is swallowed with each sip of my vodka-tonic.

I was nine. My parents came home hollow from the hospital.
My mother sobbed in wild animal cries, violent splotches
of purple spread from under her skin, her chest
her cheekbones tainted; my father silent
slumped in his easy chair, his neck gray-yellow
half of his face buried in clenched raw knuckles.

Teachers pat me like a loaf
especially the chalk-dusted
I learn early who has authority

Behaving is more important
than the Theory of Relativity
The length of my hems a critical topic

When I was your age
the subway cost fifteen cents
gas cost thirty-two cents a gallon
television was free
& so was Saturday confession
in preparation for Sunday communion
when I was your age…

Commuting, standing
in a half-empty
subway car, reading news
on my phone, an article

on two competing
theories of consciousness,
triggers a memory…

I remember being told to soak
myself in unreason—that words
fall to pieces because the wind

needs her role; not everything
must be a weight to grunt over.

Once we followed the others on all fours,
contributing trails through grass and brush
to favorite trees and watering holes
before our spines thrust us up on two feet…

I want to meet
night as a friend
who welcomes and comforts
offers solace and replenishment.
I want night to
become a place
I seek
to deliver, to surrender, to belong.

Last night the new moon broke open across my shoulders.
Then dawn came through the trees
in pinpoints of varying sizes
like starlight glowing among the leaves.

A sea wife,
my mother didn’t have time
to pace a widow’s walk,
searching for a sail on the horizon.

She was too busy
pinning up sheets to dry,
weeding the garden…

Two restless houseflies
buzz around my living room,
stirring the August heat on this
dog day of a summer afternoon

They land for a moment, then
take off again

My love and I drive south
For seven minutes of darkness.
During solar eclipse, the sun proposes,
A sparkling rim and white-hot stone,
We drive for margaritas, the blue Pacific,
to make love when Orion rises…

Here they come, on they go,
One by one, in a row,
misanthropic phantoms
Drifting by me on the street…
snuffed candelabrums….
No warmth to meet…
Incense del Dia de Muertos

As children we mocked
The earthworm’s ambitious move
From safety assured

As children we laughed
At their madness
Their vulnerable bodies
Called by the drumming

A hawk rises on a prairie thermal,
its diminishing black shadow below,
its eye wed in magic to a single spot.

I step in to feel promptly like the prey,
wobbly with hypnosis by gazing above
me, a disfavored adversary to a predator.

Hell is a terrible place to tell a joke said the
man with the beard, as if God poured him
his cup of wine every night and whispered
the water into his rivers. and I’ve never
known how to love what i can’t see, you can
ask her and her and her, so your words
crawl to me. they don’t look me in the eyes…

In summer months
sun and moon rise from the same spot,
a point northeast of my porch, the place I welcome morning.

I drank Merlot last night from the wine glass you gave me
and thought about how we’d met when our children were
chubby angels, marriage still appeared the answer and the
Twin Towers still raised up above Manhattan like trusted sentinels.

moose at the forest edge
cross the meadow in the sun
munching browse little trees
head up sniffing on the breeze
easy easy ecotone easy
filament barnacle billabong
troubadour trouble away…

People of Thebes! who walk in the debris
Left by the Seven[1] and mourn
The Dragon who lies in the dust,
His teeth chipped, murmuring
About mothers and sons.

We have no heat left for showers
and the washing up. The instructions
to relight the pilot are detailed,

patient—but leave us no warmer.
Grease hangs on our pans.
How quickly we dry ourselves…