“The night we met, you needled your way in through a tiny rip in the screen.”

“The jellyfish first hovered unreachable, removed as backlit clouds.”

“and when the debt collector calls

tells me to pay up I am covered

head to toe in lavender, sunbathing on the deck

sucking hard on a pressed green juice…”

“There is the white belly of a hawk bending

over the Ford dealership on Central Avenue

and there is the voice of my fear which says

I’ll kill you for exposing me.”

“I’m paying attention to the tornado watch that may become a tornado warning across all of north Mississippi. It was calm outside when I came to bed, but in Mississippi in spring the weather can change that fast.”

“She is face down on the table as the hospital machine whirrs closer, and she thinks: she could lose them, these things that she carries, and it would not matter anywhere near as much as she’s told it would matter, though that may be because her breasts have never mattered much to her. “