This basement window Allows a glint of light Through its high narrow strip of muddied glass. It’s well before dawn now I can smell a skunk sauntering past the yard Which is why my hound has been, well Hounding while I wrote all night…

  Better to start with what I Haven’t missed. I haven’t missed the meals I skipped When the choice was art or Bread I haven’t missed money Unless I was broke and begging But I’d miss any page gone from these shelves I haven’t missed…

  Alabaster cinched in ebony velvet A golden comb glitters, worked to match jeweled straps Ever patient unruffled she waits Delicate carmine nostrils and lips Never flare or curl But she’s been holding that fan for hours and she Leans on her free hand, fingers…

  I’ve asked a million times to pick up your room but you Always leave it to the last nano second Good thing nobody Ever Visits.

  Dad wonders if all this banding of birds and tagging of ears creates selection pressure in favor of jewelry But with microbeads The Great Garbage Patch Spinning in the Pacific And asphalt to go by, It won’t be good

    That’s death and the frontier neck and neck with death is the soul which flits off into other dimensions if you’re in to that kind of thing Space is just geography without the Geo topography without the Topo Unnavigable via pitch, tilt, and…

    Without the fluids see I get those migraines But I won’t drink plain water I tried and carried a jug for months Always still half full at twilight Way too many migraines Any one of my ten Classrooms has tea stains on the…

    She was thirteen, I was six We’d gotten her through an infection Still the days of putting your dog out the front door To patrol the streets nightly She’d jump the fence anyway Still the days of no vets Unless the beast somehow…

  Our Miss Brooks goes home at night, Where the rooms are empty, The chairs are silent, There never were any of her own children, and the Work is never done. Papers to grade of course and Dinner to drink. A page of curricular notes…

  You might write a poem now Proselytizing the omen of my hair Twining in the wind, Telling the world my smile Froze you in your tracks. Later you might paint Medusa Over these features Telling the world you should have Recognized the signs and…