Maybe the doctor thought thus when she ordered / the cesarean, cutting in before Nature could bare / her jagged red-tinged teeth.
My nephew says seeing a cardinal means / there’s a soul nearby, so I wonder who’s flitting / from the red oak to the neighbor’s fence / to watch us at this vacation house.
The fish tank / / hummed, as their fish-eyes bulged into two drunk uncles leering at our / see-thru nightgowns, with flammable gills.
I needed to be a part of something—anything, a neighborhood—a community, glued together like dark red nail polish dripped dried on white bathroom tile, a messy blob of circumstance reborn.
so there was debt / and gratitude / / and duty before / ceremony
On my back / my ears underwater / but not / my mouth my breath tuned / / a strange subterranean –
Legend says it was Waxwings / that plucked out Saint Lucy’s eyes. / She still carries them around on a platter / like an offering of deviled eggs.
On the morning / of my autistic son’s twentieth birthday / I visit bringing cake and groceries / that he will eat alone / and I wonder if his house will ever have its church.
