Stay

I want to stay effervescent in a bottle, the only fish in my bowl I want my eyes to grow to twice their size and my ears to curve like satellite dishes and my skin to gray from lack of sun and to stay alone in my own cave, seeing and hearing what I know.…

Starlings

I see Two starlings Kitted out in snow-speckled oil-sheen feathers, Their throats aflutter with evening song and nightling eyes looking elsewhere. They have passed countless times through the gilded air and never known each other, And forge and mourn alone with the murmuration behind. I see Two galaxies Winging opposite and constellating for expansion, Swallowing…

A Wolf

They have given Jagged teeth To this snow-melted fog And called the moon An ice-greedy eye And pawed the frosted ground And nuzzled the ribcages of bare, white woods With ruddy, snapping jaws. They have shorn The sheep And hidden, Yellow-eyed and steaming, In the shepherd’s crook And simpered and grinned And, dripping red, Picked…

A Year

It's like breathing underwater and thinking that you will one day come up for air, but knowing that you never really will. It's adjusting, always changing, learning to swim now that there is no earth beneath you. It's waking up in the night forgetting that he died and then remembering in the morning what you…

Kingdom

Nobody asked if he wanted the kingdom. Nobody questioned the crown on his head. As it lowered onto his tawny mane, he flinched as one does away from the axe. "Long live the king!" was a curse on his shoulders; it menaced like the hiss of a snake preparing to strike. And now there was…

Moon

The sun turns his circle and tries to kiss the moon, But she has known lovers like him before. All fire and tongue, All heavy, consuming density. She counts her puckers and pits and pockmarks, And never forgets. When he shines on her, all charm and warmth, She allows him for a moment, and then,…

Fingers

I see you in my fingers, Squared off, ungainly spiders that stumble over the keys, Sometimes producing song, Sometimes a stunted chorus just out of reach. I can recall your pinched pointer and thumb pecking at the whites like a bird, Chirruping note by note, Preparing me for the mysteries I now know. And often…

Saltwater Baptism

It is saltwater baptism when my mother cries And God is in the room Even in the space between each tear drop The cracks in the world The breaking and shattering God is in the room And oceans fall on my shoulders when I hold her And seas rain into my hands in the secret…

The camellias are blooming

The camellias are blooming, Dad, and I wish you could see them. I know you always wanted more flowers. But for every single camellia here, there are countless flowers where you are, And I know that that garden is sweeter. The scent of it drew you out of your chest, and from their colors you cannot look…