I open my kitchen blinds and gape at the hawk, perched on the garden lamp at the edge of my lawn. She notices everything with those prehistoric, ravening eyes, like two old stars, charged with origin stories far more savage than mine. She isn’t here to sing— She’s here to scream— To tear meat from…
Winter drops the late afternoon sun into my bedroom window just after three o’clock. He hovers there— burning the edges of my closed curtains like an eclipse I can touch. He says, you have to invite me in, which I find charming. My palms hover over the fabric, pin-holed from cats, reminding me of that…
Your sleek, black body pressed on the stucco wall in my backyard should have frightened me, Latrodectus— But instead I felt like I did as a child, crunching through the woods, achingly aware of things greater than myself. I made your acquaintance then, discovering that you go days without breathing, you bond to vertical surfaces,…
Another milestone today. I approach this one with a little more reckless joy than the last, but I’m still too afraid to dive headlong into the deep of celebration. I trust that trepidation though so I’m honoring it. I’ve been selfish of late. Eating right, exercising, indulging all the whims of my weirdness. Amazon packages…
I wish I could remember how old we were or what grade we were in 3rd? 5th? I just wanted to get it right for you tonight on your birthday The fat pine tree that anchored your back when I leaned in The incense of sun-baked needles under our feet The roundness of your child’s…
“just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better. In you, so much is happening now; you must be patient like someone who is sick, and confident like some one who is recovering; for perhaps you are both.”
On the way to my mailbox I saw this feather sprouting between the grass blades in my lawn. Half in shadow, half in light A reluctant imposter doing a poor job of blending in. I wondered briefly about the animal who left it there to live out its days disenfranchised and alone. A relic of…
If you take a picture of the moon you will never be satisfied. If you walk barefoot in the grass your cats will sniff longingly after your toes. If you put your ear up against hundreds of leaves colliding in a breeze you will hear the ocean. If you can’t bring yourself to turn on…
This picture was taken on a parking lot at the city hall where I work. I stood on a border, some kind of state line, where my car idles on one side and a tiny forest on the other. The entrance was almost imperceptible, but it’s the first thing I noticed. A narrow triangle of…
White orchids don’t have Instagram accounts, much less fake ones posed in a pitcher for my cats to chew on. Still, I wondered yesterday if they long to be noticed and find it insufferable to go days at a time without a single soul snapping their picture. If you really think about it, it’s not…
Sobriety Poet 