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There would be no one to live for; she would live for herself.

He glowered even as a little child. Maybe because he has your bad eyes.

Her bra is black, her breasts full and white. There is too much flesh.

Between me and the sky is a screen door and a whole mess of wind.

At a red light he touches his cheek. The stubbly skin is sensitive, febrile.

Forgive my father, the promise that he made, that I could turn all this to gold.

Strange then, strange now, that language wants to be alone with me.

It is right that tears fall for something small and forgotten. And I would never scold the onion for causing tears.

We spread. Kneel. We’ll come out missing parts. This we know.

One said she heard the jazz-band sob when the little dawn was grey.

My mother and I remained apart. My father came late to the party.

She began to see the word, or traces of it, wherever she went.

He came into town with his big red pen and began revising us.

Ajax killed men and then animals thinking they were men.

I waited and waited, rethinking first sentences in my sleep.

Bees kill wasps by gathering around and tightening in the middle.

I could go in for some pie why the hell not, there’s so little time.

Sixty-year-old veins look like giant roots breaking through earth’s skin.

Love speaks in silence, on behalf of lovers too tired for words.

I’m recalling his socks, the inked initials, the splashes of blood.

Flesh is temporary, memory a tilting barn dismantled nail by nail.

Salt provokes, tenderizes. Your wounds, your dinner.

Think how you move, how a room changes with your smallest breath.

My soul is simple; it doesn’t think. Something strange paces there now.

She commands, under her breath, You must be the son.

A goddess was offended; her altar required my virgin blood.

But too much rain can translate anything to unspeakable.

My lust works like the tides pulling in reverse, controlled by a simple ballast.

The poem I can’t yet write saves itself for when it can’t be avoided.