What they don't say
is how the cold weather
turns a predator desperate,
sneaking in among sleeping houses

If tomorrow is yesterday’s attempt
at an apology, does He
need to hear my excuses today?

Present to repose,

the doubter yet abiding

suspends unseen need.

I sat on the couch
absorbing the dramatic dialogue.
I felt lightyears away.
I handed over a form of me to myself

Maybe it came in last night for slugs
or to avoid steady September sun
or has slept here since our early frost.

i was a 4 AM girl, leg splayed, on display.
a strangled patience feigned love.
i kept kisses rolled inside my navel.

Teachers will reinvent learning
and make ghosts of poetry

the way poetry made a ghost of your voice.

The ones I love will go on
with their little lives—

reading, running,
fucking.

When I moved out,
we both cried.

But you’re not blind, she said—
and things don’t just disappear.

I barely had half a glass of wine once & left the party wanting to kiss the entire room

brass flare melting the big band into a mirror a kind of Saturday night prayer

Feathered foie gras à la
Golden, gregarious, gutted.
Hold the flesh.
I want the eggs! Just the eggs.

That aluminum dent,
that lack of shatter,
satisfies like nothing other, nothing

I’ve been talking to ghosts most of my life.
Sometimes they tell me things I don’t understand, like

Do you know a Venus day is longer than a Venus year?

I hear this and just feel confused.

ever watch
someone
smoke
because they can’t just
stand outside

Generous verbosity. On dates you interrupt
doors for me. Slay dragons with your opinion.
Where would I be if you hadn’t told
me: Bernanke destroyed the American dollar

—a simple substitution:
college algebra. Ex equals
fewer hours spent making meals, shaping squared notes
of eight and a half by eleven

Upon this taut
And tangled page, find
Written a history of
Mighty winds to come.

You found the shell as you were sifting through the sand. It was clean and ivory white, the edges were worn down from friction and life. You admired the uniqueness of the shell, put it in my hand, and said to give it to the kids.

Children cartwheel like gulls
pecking at sand in tide pools,

squawking claims over curious crustaceans.