“to ask if he thought this could be long-term, this safety, / this him. Thank you for eating it before I learned his answer. / And this morning, four a.m., I reach into your mouth, find”

“winter—in under a week. / By now I’ve learned / I can only grow the things “

“Letters, weeks filing past / between them, long-necked like vees / of geese. Which outpost? / Which outpost? You pouring sand”

 “Sometimes  the  mundane things are themost helpful.  A bigger stage and better equipment.  Trajectories and linesof  flight.  More  silence. “

“or they fall out with the barest pressure, when i apply lipstick or when i brush them, when i touch the gum line it gives like bubble yum soft and wet but no stick my mouth a plump soil overrun with hard teeth my words must grow around, i gather them until my mouth is lush, i throw them into the sky like rice at a wedding”

“ Autopay & deposits in my knuckles, fingers filled with shards of angry bones. Whipped not buttercreamed. Short on the sides & back. High & tight. A fraction of a percentage. Same difference. One size fits & starts, fits some but not all. Batteries & piggy banks & bottled water, pickled & canned. Nothing missed: a six pence, a threepenny opera, an ounce of blow, of gold, of plug nickels, of dollars penniless down to the cent. “  

“My grandmother in the dining room with the deck of cards. My grandfather in the garage with the red rubber ball on a fishing line that lets you know when to stop driving.“

“I see the ghost who once was a boy / who played baseball but loved fútbolI see the ghost who once was a boy / who lost his boot in a snow drift”

“Look forward, or look back. / These are the options. / Tread softly to the altar. / Pause briefly. Unburden.”

“Echo dreams of being an Onassis / lookalike. Dreams sheer textiles, greenrooms”

“Close your eyes / & imagine nothing we tell each other, or / imagine romance: downtown Santa Ana &”

“Depression has been found to be likely / familial, an unconducted orchestra / of blood left”

“my friend, an elegy that has taken into account, into heart & October wind, / the weight of someone’s soft”

Her opera glasses. Her black and white / artistic snapshots taken on the August '36 / return trip on the Normandy. She titled”

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

“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”

“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”

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

“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”