Poetry

When It Smells Like Rain

perhaps there should be another word for depression / we’ve become too accustomed to the sound

Love, We Never Get Too Far

You know / drowning is as much a predicament of time / as water.

I Wasn’t There

Cancer came and took a lung, / then came and took the rest / of him. And I wasn’t there…

After Top Surgery

You do not have to stagger around the house, / unaided and weak, / as the meds wear off or kick in.

Her Marked Black Body

The macabre moon / Once lunged at me / It hisses red / Hangs voyeuristically / Wants me to stand in its balkanized light.

Etymology of Chlorophyll

Love, / from Germanic lufu, is intestinal and milky / like undug onions squeezed from mothers.

Letter to a Dead Mother

Thinking of you as I pick up flecks of oats from the kitchen floor, / put them back in the container. You know, the five-second rule.

Spring

We watch the gardener arc the hose / carelessly washing away the work / of mud sparrows, hornets and wasps.

Ambiguous Loss

It feels like holding a bird in one hand / and a bowling ball in the other.