“of all people, circling, as I was, my ego, / wrecked, as I was, in my own splendor / and drunkenness, landlocked, as I was,“

“The problem, as I saw it, was the lack of antagonist. She vomited in the middle of the night, and then immediately had to clean it up with the napkins she’d filched from various restaurants, because the ants showed up instantly, an immense train of them chugging across the floor straight for the disgusting mess, more and more showing up, grim black avenue wriggling with purpose, to carry away the bounty of her effluence. A small note from him came as a kind of affirming prayer.”

“around her in my book of saints. / Cecilia at the piano, even the same / in death. Gorgeous with blush /just run from her cheeks. Mary’s heart”

“I did not inherit Mother’s auburn hair, but Father’s, which mother claims to have been dirt brown. Mother and I hardly resemble each other, except to be both tall of stature, with the square jaws and prominent brows of many who live in this area. Our shoulders are wide, not sloping like those of so many women, and there is enough meat upon us to be considered farm-worthy. We have the strength and agility to catch a flustered chicken and wring its neck without getting clawed, to chop firewood and do a man’s work in whatever weather happens along.”

‘

“to a pond of koi, and all God’s creatures / going round from the dizzy casting / of neurosis, and of wind”

“While slicing shallots with / a cleaver I wonder if / I’ll ever wield it at my daughter”

“The book I purchased is a religious one filled with counsel from the heavens, from the gods, from the prophets of old. My particular copy cost thousands because this book has become something of a collector’s item in my church. This one was notably special to me because inscribed on the front is the name Marinda Johnson.”

“Of course he is tired, so he holds his hands, palms upturned, on his knees. He is wearing khakis.”

“It took months, but finally Henry asked me out on a Bigfoot-hunting date.  I wanted to know what, exactly, one did when looking for a creature that might not exist–but I also wanted to be alone with Henry.  If I was too young to think about love, I certainly was old enough to consider desire. I wanted to be admired, pursued, studied by him. Like Sasquatch, only sexy.”

“because it was made out of heart, and told me that it was a she: You made me to suffer, she said; which I did not know until she said it, and then I did know; It would have been better if you’d made me out of dirt, she said”

“& gusts into my belly—as though it senses / there is something to bring to life there,”

“I tell him, I only know words, not letters. We’ll switch gears, he says. A new chapter, The Pythagorean Identity. He tells me: an identity is a mathematical fact. Look at the equations. He says: They’re synonyms. I understand sameness, but I want to say: nothing is identical, though oneness is the root of identity. One is the same, a linguistic fact. The book says: Verify the identity. Like it’s all so simple. Like it’s just that easy.”

“this the prologue to our fortune-cookie opera, / the mystifying fog of today conceals the dark-ness of your future, yes, there you are at two / a.m. amtraking the porch, one last stop for”

“and it makes you feel inadequate and threatened and lost so you get on a train that’s headed out of the city singing slow ballads to your disco heartbeat to slow it down but of course there’s no slowing down now the train is only getting faster “

“held my berried index and middle and pulsed / with my bikepeddled speak / My stumbling tongue too / young for her mothertastes: a haste”

“Not being dead is neither worst nor best case scenario / It is just regular like you would see a beautiful orange chicken / I have three primary categories for things that happen / The first being AMAZING”

“The light was a specific kind / as a sky-field of stars without a moon”

“But it’s not enough to learn to float. Floating doesn’t get you where you want to be. You have to swim too. The shape of the lake is a giant bowl. There are no shallows. The Wallenpaupack is sixty feet at the deepest point, which doesn’t sound like much, but it feels much farther when you’re swimming up and not over, fighting the pressure like a kitten running with a strip of masking tape across its back.”

“ Nothing. Frozen shut. Then one day, a baby appeared in the ice, followed by another. No one could think of any missing children, but soon the lake was littered with infants.”

Thin, vinegar-sauce tang calls us / to our seats like somnambulists. / Our fever-dreams are burnt ends, / collard greens, sliced white bread.”