Poetry

Conversation with a Dead Poet

I kept them all. The poems, I mean. When I / tried to tell your mother, she’d leaned in…

Chaas Curry

Two months into her illness, Pat / lay in pain, nearly immobile, / nourished by pills and liquids, / no appetite even for favorite foods—

The Practice of Cleaning

My mother knows there are three / ways to be clean: to take a mess / that’s there and cover it…

The James Webb Telescope Detects a Heartbeat

They say the pulses come from a distant galaxy, / an infant cluster in the first moment of birth.

Breaking the Fever

The tender of your reflection / inverted in chrome / as a kettle boils

Toast

Once a woman who lost her mother / told me the story of a guru rushing / to satisfy his dying mentor’s last wish.

Because You Are Dead You Think You Can Have Anything You Want

You come back, / bent over my things / like a collector, hunched, / touching, wanting to lay claim / to everything.

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.