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Pale Blue Vein

It could be our baby. Her eyebrow, its perfect arc, the pale blue vein.

Paper Pledges

Even in death, my mother had to make things difficult for me.

Parallel Universe

It was here—over the highway—where my mother got confused.

Pardoning

My daughter swallows arrows of sunlight on her way to the grave.

Paris in the Twenties

Now he was all out of dreams, out of rage, expectations, and money too.

Partition

The fog’s sheen is a mirror: my mother sees the terrain of the future—

Patchwork Elephant

This kind of childhood stuck with a person, twisted things up.

Perfect

He was so frail, how could your heart not break when you saw him?

Perseids

How can we go on believing each day won’t be the one that flames out?

Pheasant Hunting

He was getting a divorce. I was married with two teenage children.

Phonograph Mouth

I say aria, scale of the day, weigh each square foot she’s kept up.

Pia Outloud

Pioneer Mother

Did Sharon and Roy make it harder or easier for their mother to leave?

Poems from OBIT

Death is our common ancestor. It doesn’t care who we have dined with.

Portrait of the Cartoonist as a Woman

My mother taught me to rebel within the boundaries of acceptability.

Postcolonial Nervosa and Other Poems

she thrust to where her gut bucked acid & gave out a taurine heave

Postscript

I see now that motherhood is not required to speak a mother tongue.

Pryor

He smelled like the bars my mother took me to in the middle of the day.

Purple Eyes

The purple-eyed women on her mom’s side began generations ago.

Rachel Occupies Wall Street

I reviewed the rules for myself, among them: stay in the moment.

Rae Rae

My mother hoped moving would erase the affair with a married man.

Rapture Basement

I used to be known for the humor of my music, the lightness of touch.

Rasam and Beans Curry

Every life is an imperfect continuation of another.

Reading from Intercourse

Here I am, king of the gods, making a fool of myself just to get under your gown.

Reading Henry James in the Suburbs

She had boyfriends before she met him. Well, not really boyfriends.

Reading Her Poetry

I was once a rider of mastodons, a waitress showing skin.

Reading His Poetry

She holds her smile like a note sustained at the end of a phrase.

Red Dress—1946

My head was muffled in velvet, my body exposed in an old slip.

Red Tide

I played a game I called ocean, resisted my need for air.

Redemption

No one asked that, changed as he was, he do more than survive.