Fog or a Cloud

  The exegesis of all outside, on the porch Us three in faith agreed life would end in fire, For we began in water—piecing together pieces Of the book we…

    displayed in a grid of squares she is saturated, oblique, a shape bearing no relationship to the smell of a ham sandwich or the night her uncles beat…

  IS TONAL   jump over is Dutch for here is English over there sentences line the water hold them don’t let go clamber onto the rocks over here the…

  I. I wanted to find it. I memorized the route to grandfather’s house. On the street, I loosed my six-year-old self. I watched her gather her childhood like a…

  Cumulus: You can’t see the sun — its watery glow tumbles from bellies of clouds and pools on a slice of blacktop. You’re there with your friends, peeling pieces…

  Everything I know of us was contained in a photograph with small cursive, curled edges and yellows imbalanced. A baby and an old woman. Not frail, no—she was all…

Love Song for My Lemon Hare   Green trees, sap green—streaming the interstate and hemming the fields, ladled as if from Constable’s brush, from Manchester to Nantwich, muted, yet golden,…

  Also she appeared to be floating, breathing a kind of game or to make sense of the gravy- pond plates, the castaway serviettes dolphin-finned or carpet coral, barnacles, moats?…

  I. There was the squirrel my mom killed while in Colorado with my dad, before my brother and I were born. She slowed down to let it cross the…

  Trumpet vine takes root   among incipient tomato                         deepunder and around all obstacles it presses               on through packed crowded nesses—I just     I imagine a dry clicking—it must be…

  The moon is far away, but still it sways the tides   Never look at the black sun, my grandmother tells my mother. My mother is a child, and…

    The reindeer stepped out of the box. Purple tinsel swayed from its antlers and a collar of sleigh bells jingled around its neck. “What language do you speak?”…

  In the bed, my leg a hill, when I sit up it redistributes itself. I cross: the skin-surface rippled, wind on a sea sky-lit. When did I get these…

  Part 1: Figures, Forms   Tessa said that whenever anyone spoke to her, she saw what they said. Objects, pieces of speech appeared. She would wave her hand in…