Going Strong   At eighty-one and seventy-eight, Mom and Dad are still going strong. Halfway between twelve and thirteen, Chance, our Beagle, is still going strong. Civilization, at roughly seven-thousand years old, is still going strong. In my dreams an asteroid...

Thank you for laughing each time I aver, “Who is Samuel Pepys?” when the Jeopardy category pings “Diarists.” I thank grad school for resurfacings, the tedious pages worth a chilly May,   Hampton Court morning around the corner where some costumed King Henry...

Needles glittered on the streets in the soft Dutch dawn, like shards of broken glass catching the light. Children drifted in and out of narrow passageways, their movements sluggish as the canals, like something waiting to drown. Behind the street where Anne Frank’s...

Their fires have spread from sea to the mountains Circle the wagons, our herds have fled Night crackles like a fox Is that a carriage, a hotel, charged with what? The old country is filled with that morning light We look for in paintings with one old tree A clearing...

Then I did my impression of a drag queen impersonating Ed Sullivan singing T. Rex. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t go over. What a lousy Thanksgiving. Everyone wanted to ‘do yoga.’ But asking Middle-Class white people to take up space seems redundant. Did I make it into the...

What nobody tells you about marriage is   It’s blackheads and popping pustules. It's watching someone get old in the shower. Its tweezers and hair in the drain and knowing where the scissors are. It's three hour long fights about what kind of litter to buy at the...

Slum Archangel   The velocity of her fall must have been excruciating / blackout-inducing. Tracing the arc of the angel’s nosedive: deadlift-dropped like Heaven metal and sparking all the way down, uranium-heavy, she would have cleaved the evening sky in two....

Books   There are too many. They should be pulped. They should be pulped to make useful things. Cardboard coffins, for instance. I’d like to be buried in unread copies of Moby Dick.     Old Photographs   I don’t like old photographs. Old...

I cannot vote myself out of this scent. Planting sunflowers, planting children, the same thin place for a woman. A ritual grown from winter’s improbability. Smoke, ice, ancestral fingerprints. Around this cold evidence, planets painted by a noble hand, lanterning the...

I fucked up my knitting in the sauna. The wool fraying with sweat, animal tiring of infrared, birds zorbing like orbs of candles, by me, showering in the dark. Alright, and the dog rotates in the air above my bed in my sleep she knows this is a different day the rest...

Dark sunset blooms above my veins, Human valleys in marrow eruption. Amaranthine plum-drip bruises Mark me crimson thief, orchard’s fox. Botanic sangria slither, my throat a pink road, Summer’s death the wine of rot and endings.   Plum thief wears mortal wound,...

Because sweetheart, this life is a born escape artist, a migrating fever, a convict tattooed in invisible ink, without mercy or nostalgia. – Tony Hoagland   Dear, you tell me you hope for another 25 years together.   You, who used to skew toward ballerina-looking...

When my children ask me who won the world, fear grabs all 78 places American women used to think of as autonomous. Here in Spain, the news   corners me from 5000 miles away, its claws sharp but intangible— a lucky escape, friends say. Luck, that four-letter...

i ask the sun too much   each plant i’ve kept alive so far i call my friend. each of my friends has its own quiet prayer, it’s called how i’d like to be cared for—   for instance, from a distance, please & gently, within reach, without expectation but...

On the bank of the Seine in the heath and heart of the sun’s playground— that's where we lay.   Our heads rest on a cushion of plight as we sink further into the fields of lush river violets, violets smooching our petaled cheeks— blanketing our freckles from the...

I invent a time machine to go back and witness the moment before my birth certificate signing, my parents’ silent prayer before clicking the pen To Julie, once, Julie, now, Julien, forever, my heart. What if your name was Antoine or Rebecca or Augustine or Vicky or...