It’s raining the day she meets her first grandchild. Soon there are five of them, small and dirty and sweet-smelling. She’s easy with them, more so than with her own children. She calls them devils when they come to her, holding out worms and candy.
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Mrs. Gwynn’s markering made that butcher paper sing. Person! It chirped in my right ear. Person! It cooed in the left. Person! It ballyhooed around my legs and feet. Her nostrils widened, then her face drew tight. I knew she smelled the sharp tang of milk parlor on me, chlorinated-manure stink that went deeper than scalding water and soaps. I was proud.
a whole gigantic marching band, one that used to be louder than bulldozers, louder than jets, louder than Aunt Catherine after three margaritas (no salt)
I hoped you’d grow into a southern red oak speaking of your roots and the struggle for sun.
I want a little more bureaucracy
in my horror.
Zach Braff is the perfect manic pixie dream boy
for any pet funeral, and yet, I suppose
he didn’t get the memo that he was meant
to come down from the Garden State and do the honors.
Our chapbooks
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HALF PAST 11:00 sleeps in my bed and refuses to be
roused. I tuck the sheets in tight before I leave for work
At the dark sky campsite I put a red filter over my flashlight.
I’m sorry to do this to you right now. I know the movers are coming in two days. I can picture you in your apartment: the sunset over the city glistening through your floor-to-ceiling windows, Joni Mitchell or Linda Ronstadt crooning in the background while you bubble-wrap your dishes. I know you don’t have time for this. Timing has never been my strong suit. My only defense is: I can’t think about anything else.
Do you, by any chance, remember the first time we met?
He only allows my entrance to unbutton my dress
and form those animal poses. To be near him
is to be reduced to line
Here, riding in a taxi on the Manhattan Bridge
late at night in a pit-pat drizzle,
everything looks puffy from the back seat window
Just under the browned swamp surface: a reaching
neck (not pictured). The edge of a stick (pictured).
He was NBA-player height
converted to Judaism to marry
And the town crier cries la localende! This is one of the stories where a stranger
comes to town. A stranger with a stranger tool.
Come down from the hill freckled with mustard gesare. You know the stuff, Mara
how it explodes in middle spring.
