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…

31. Becoming

I am a new creation always, regenerating like the Time-Weaver himself, but only because of Him, never without. I am more than this jumble of atoms scattered from the universe. I am a quiet constellation, perhaps a dying star, perhaps just newly born, perhaps a fire that always is and never was. I am still…

30. Smile

Surrender to me tickle and beam Toothless or full of white gleam No wrinkle is too small for me Give glint, give a wide-gaping seam Loose bark and titter and boom No timid or half-hearted croon Rambunctious howl in full bloom And a grin that can brighten the room I can see all your future…

29. Amaranthine

My lady, with eyes of amaranthine, Is just as fair as she is mean, And twice as fair with touch of spring. . Her loveliness is not serene; It does not simper, coo, or preen, But barks and roars 'til it is seen. . Her tongue is sharp as steel and steam, With no thought…

28. Turn

I have chased a silhouette in my dreams, The meeting, embrace, communion, kiss, And alacrity designates me Pursuer, Though I run as if in water. Some murmur of bones and muscle shifts in my periphery And I am tilted sidelong toward a shoulder, collarbone, grasp upon a side body, A puzzle piece I know fits…

27. Fortress

There is no shelter that lives and breathes, Save whom I can call Father. No name else can cover and protect, Can shiver feathers over like a shield, Can comfort with a good word. There is no other fortress that makes active its duty, That does not need defending, That can hold its own without…

26. Dissonance

So often in music, I crave the tension of notes too close together, The lingering discomfort, The hanging resolution, The inhale without exhale, And I think the root is here: There is not enough space between spirit and flesh. These chafe against each other always, The enormity of soul encased in cling-film skin. Without that…