Month: September 2023

When I awake From a long winter’s nap It’s hard to reach the surface What time is it What day is it They both are elusive My cats are snuggling Purring contentedly I’m warm and still Part dreaming The lure of...

The very first time You said my name “Mama” I wept You claimed me In a different way Than anyone else has Before or since Two simple syllables Spoken in love...

I whirl giddily in your phosphorus embrace, Awaiting erasure, coupling, teet, and coil. It’s so far across the cytoplasm— I need your strong arm to steer me. I enter the noon maw of your recombinase And shut my eyes for...

Inside the walk-in cooler of my father’s corner store, I take refuge from summer’s heat. Hiding amongst beer cases and lettuce crates, I count heads, longing to live anywhere but here. Later, in my room, sweat-soaked, I lean...

for my son It’s my fault, really, how fine dining feels like a necessity, not a splurge. It began, I think, with your 10th birthday— the year your classmates hosted Chuckie Cheese parties, you choose La Caravella, —the fancy...

Spilling along my garden path—           their panicles heavy with airy white flowers           a sway in the summer breeze: their roots, I’m told, stretch thirteen feet—           long and slender,                like my...

I am not Monet’s lily. Not floating among shiny lily pads or flowering pastels. I am the rusty underside. Claude Monet, I dare you. Dive in, submerge yourself, see a mother who has not bloomed, glistened, slept for ten months....

Therapist, mediator, judge, I type each in my calendar then walk, a quiet hour before our kid swap at the attorney’s office. Each step, I wonder when we began destroying each other. The night your eyes subtly started to wander?...

She trusts no one, not even this man who went around and around proving himself again and again. She is cautious, no arms to break her fall. Worry takes her millions of miles away. Terrified that her wedding band, like Saturn’s...

I see her. All wave and curl along the shore. I hear birdsong trill, inviting you to inhale her scents of salt and sex and jasmine. Black hair, green-eyed siren, wings spread wide. She is id afire; do not breathe her smoke. It...