Fear of crime When I was a toddler, a killer held me in his arms, much like a man's knees hold space on a crowded train. A statement that says, Woman must make herself as small as possible, even if that means dismemberment. Compassion for victims A child scrapes...
Poetry
All I Know About Sin is Robin Egg Blue
two gentle orbs nestled in a fallen thatched bowl found beneath the canopy of a Douglas Fir’s lowest limbs the neighbor girl wanted me dared me to crush it in my palm so easily I chose, and she looked satisfied before leaving me cross-legged in the pines my father’s...
You ask the soil if you belong
What has always been whisperedthrough other leaves grows bold,thunderclaps laterite-red:never. Transplant, hue and clay,your roots never the right length.Untrue/halfbrednot hybrid, weednot plant. Be silentand show some gratitudefor this flowerbed,for being at...
Wheatfield, with Crows
What if there were two moons or maybe even three, what if this crow was an envoy from the realm of the moon, and what if that country were golden, except for the sky and the ruts across the field? If we urge our mule forward, we will enter into the frame of the...
I DON’T KNOW HOW TO SAY HEAVEN TASTES LIKE MAPLE SYRUP
without just saying it. God / should have nothing less than some constant pre-pancake aura about him / some cosmic eggs-and-bacon energy luring us all inside. There must be / a reason we’re supposed to want to go / there. Heaven I mean / and I can’t imagine / people...
A Good Earth
I talk facing away from the dead They replace me with the change in my pocket A penny that has yet to be invented They say, “You have to know how to cut a throat on the way to cutting a throat” After sleeping on a mattress made from two garbage bags of clothes I...
Not on the Railroad Tracks
The tracks flanked the river between twin rails. The red light blinked westward a permanent, arrested fixture, begging stop forever. Crews cruise westward then eastward like any way was a good direction. The sun shone fall in its amber palette. Music stuttered...
Two Dogs
i. as of tomorrow as of today as of right now we are lost in the woods’ brown leaves parchment paper grateful for the perpetual churning beneath our feet well aware of tonight’s frost warning more signs pointing to us maybe getting past all this ii. the larger issues...
Razing, Scrubbing
Razing Unease like black smoke imploding at dusk. All things like a calendar or a game of hopscotch. Everything meaning something else how I remember watching a boy burn insects in the parking lot after church. His eyes like love always shattering—as if caught in that...
The Promise
Tongue my dress like goddess whisper. Lick the milk lazy or lie in rust still panting delirious petals—tell me the incubator we live in has blown a fuse or that tomorrow, my daughter will wake up inside the canyon walls I secreted her inside until the world’s oxygen...