“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.”

“promising herself—next time—a thimble, as the blood / ran down into a starched cuff. Mostly,”

“I juggle them constellating a colony”

“It bothers me to no end that patience, like all virtues, takes time to cultivate. So, to pass the time, I read and hope to learn something. I read about Galileo. “

“soldiers have no self to give away,”

“I’ve found you / a brand of chicken soup with alphabets floating like algae / during a bloom”