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When I was a child I once hallucinated that the laugh track was for me.

You quickly find nothing interests people so much as themselves.

If you’re not having fun, then there isn’t a big impetus to stay alive.

I never entered no-man’s-land by any light brighter than the palest moon.

You move rocks, run water, check the path of mouse and rabbit.

We’re phosphorus, we’re this glowing rock under UV light in the mineral shed.

We study your expressions, your cragged face, evidence of winds.

Before we were ornament, we were names moving in a mouth.

I like that it’s not me you pine for, and like that I don’t pine for you.

I am weary of the summer’s darkness in this cavern of elms. I wish the leaves would fall, that one wind would blow them away.

I answered, blood rushing like the shadow cast by a cloud of starlings.

The current looked cold and brown. It would freeze soon—November.

Before sunrise I counted nine meteors scratching the heavens.

With my lime-green nitrile gloves I carried him around to the others.

The blackness of her hair seemed to pull the color from her body.

I returned to research a history we’d only known through stories.

Sit beside me. Old country, I am hopeful and troubadour.

Who mind loved would not rather be loved body too. Since all is all.

Sundays, your wife at Mass, we locked ourselves in my room.

I am going to relate to you the most lamentable love affair of my life.

With your hands in the air you held an infant tightly, trying to save it.

Mistaking water hemlock for parsley, I die hours later in the hospital.

I’m guilty—locating my gratitude against someone else’s suffering.

How High Is the Moon? Too high to be touched, too high to be felt.

The heron returns; the sky veils her stars; then bares them.

I had that feeling of being young again, immortal, wearing a magic war shirt.

This poem showcases Helen's ambition, clarity, and wide talent.

The knife in my mother’s hand flakes into penny-stained rust.

Mild nights would have us out of doors—at their opening I am rapt.

I have a maple in the yard and from time to time all is distant.