2/29/16

a springwarm leap day
pulling dusty strings of morning glories
from where, in death, they hug the chain-link

now piled on the softening dirt
still kinked, knot of decay

2/28/16

sprawling like an open hand,
the spider plant
cast down a feeler
sewn with pearls -
five white flowers

2/27/16

reemerging into the sight
of a thousand sidewalk eyes
my skin feels soft
and penetrable
like a freshly molted cicada

2/26/16

the stones, in daylight
nosed by grazing oxen,
grow weird in darkness -
vestibule to the wicked wild,
a place to sharpen teeth and run

2/25/16

she comes to the door
with snow-wet hair
and a gleaming white light
like Clara Barton pulling
a lantern from her cape

2/24/16

in the unlit kitchen
i brew coffee and stand
barefoot, watching
stone-black clouds
cascade down the mountain

2/23/16

the hour spent
eating bread and butter
with my small son,
sitting at his toy table
in the dusty morning light

2/22/16

snap awake from a
gut-clench nap, gasping
in a roil of sweat -

outside the grey world
is barely humming

2/21/16

keep the window cracked open,
let oceandark night seep
through the screen -
octopus ink billowing
through a sailor's trawl

2/20/16

late winter riot of spring -

wind licking bare skin

held out in the sunshine,

skulls filled and overflowing

with phlox and poppy

2/19/16

when the wet night pulls close

with a braided melange:

spilled beer, old sweat and

the sweet tang of underarms, 

like it was summer

2/18/16

after the men left, we flew 

to the corners of the winter hut

(where sealmeat hung from sinew)

screamed and shook, scrape-jawed until

our teeth clattered in airless, sunless still

2/17/16

His hands,
small as dormice,
pull through his hair;
thin reeds of harvest -
bird fluff, milkweed.

2/16/16

daddy, bus-tired with a
backpocket necktie dangling
like a tiger tail,
fetches our lost crayon
from under the fridge

2/15/16

the obstinate little donkey
who once snapped her rein
to ransack sunwarm muscats
now wearily circles the bottom of the canyon -
swirl of blood in the cold creek

2/14/16

valentine's drive by:
florescent muzak nausea
in the hothouse,
icicle exitwounds in the
salt-rimmed parking lot

2/13/16

the baby naps
face pushed into the sheet like
he's wriggling down an anthill,
butt up, knees tucked,
caught in a beautiful dive

2/12/16

mom
i fell out of a tree
crashed my bike
gave birth, suffered, split and
i think i need a band-aid

2/11/16

i peeked
into the soft cleft
and a red eye
peeked
back

2/10/16

soft waking skin pillowing
a furrow of bruise and blood
in a painstaking reveal:
slice the hide from a stonefruit
and trace its yawing veins

2/9/16

my son, you are silent

as a river seen from a high hill;

but when I traverse your shore

collecting pebbles, I swear

I hear my name 

2/8/16

when he collapses, howls
digs his face into the floorboards
i am blind to everything beside
his meager ribcage, his neck
slender and strong as a sapling

2/6/16

the block-long scab of dog turds 

and cellophane may well have been

forty arid years; broken moses, I

said a prayer for snackcakes unbought

and perished in the glow of the far unimart

2/5/16

i was nearly swooning

when the call came:

swan-necked, dizzy from

cut skin, gleeful with

good news

2/4/16

his arched heel
held high as a pup's hock
traces a phantom pain;
his hobbled steps,
this unnameable wound

2/3/16

those strange-god surgeons stole 

my rough pearl and threw me back:

a halved clam,

loose rake of gills wet

with my sandy blood