When this is over, your hair / will be to your waist and the curls / may be gone, the way they stretch / even now into loose waves I want / to bury my eyes into
Sheltering In
Count
Maybe the doctor thought thus when she ordered / the cesarean, cutting in before Nature could bare / her jagged red-tinged teeth.
Cardinal
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.
Self-Portrait with Elegy
The fish tank / / hummed, as their fish-eyes bulged into two drunk uncles leering at our / see-thru nightgowns, with flammable gills.
The Neighbors
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.
Ode to my great great grandfather’s five wives
so there was debt / and gratitude / / and duty before / ceremony
Doxology
On my back / my ears underwater / but not / my mouth my breath tuned / / a strange subterranean –
Emergence
In the beginning was the station:/metal axis of rails, streamlined / / tubes of genesis
Magpie Visits Saint Lucy at the Convent for Retired Nuns
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.
Psaltery & Lyre 