No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story. No Kings.
Linguistic Exogamy
In this dream the house is silent. My mother closes
the piano. She opens her mouth and I add in
her words, like fear, and adoration, the terrible
translation of a hygienic room. Even then
it is different from what I want to hear,
nor have I felt it. I used to call her fascist because
she would not understand. I would let sunlight
expand quiet between us. The limitations of
specialized language have given us much grief.
Avalanche
After the tumbling
of a wave of snow
has quieted
and you are trapped
in depth and whiteness,
you should clear a space
At the donut shop, Victor followed the manager Kurt’s instructions and asked his first customer of the day if she had an AARP card. “You get a free donut if you have one.”
I looked up. The vultures were circling. Chris would've pointed to the mangroves and said, "There must be something dead in there.” The dead thing of the moment was lobster. Summers were dead here. Then, at the end of July, the place filled up with lobster divers. That’s what they called them, divers, but the water was so shallow it was less like diving and more like reaching your hand out of your boat and grabbing a lobster.
gem
I’d just bought limes
dreaming up autumn skies
at the close of empty party bags
full of the same
leaning a bad haircut
“Can you clear some of the stuff out of the attic?” my husband asks. “I need to fix that cracked window. The clutter’s in my way.”