The Art of Saving

you have saved them for autumn
the crane flies of our summer
legs bent oddly trembling
you have shown me glassine wings
shadow too delicate
to sustain time
you are full of expectations of flight
aware of the sensitive places on wings
that never heal
you have saved them for autumn
legs woven together in a plastic bag
thorax against thorax
you have saved them for fire
the only light left in the room
the swift lick upward




(Published in Ophidian, 2010)

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The Body Opening
for Dorothy


I

My son sends a message—our communication
polite, and when he leaves the capitals off words, I
bite my lower lip questioning how mothering
might have been done better, how little I knew of
physical pain, the body opening, the opening
body; when he was small, I pushed him--just once when
he would not stop crying--and slapped his brother just once--
all of those bloated months--nipples bitten and
sucked—all of that giving gone
to blue rage--such a small thing: capital letters
the body’s own forgetfulness.

II

I am working off the front porch growing things--I am not
coming at this right.
I am trying to grow things
without a pot, lavender roots transplanted into soil
loamy and bitter; I break away dead twigs until the
green center of the plant is wild like hope, like anything
you touch and want to touch again--the not
knowing makes me squat lower
push my face in close to examine the segment where
life decides which way to go.

III

One summer my mother-in-law called the magpies evil as
they snatched at her corn, brushed along her migrant fears,
and now I find myself loving them with unreasonable intent,
the length of them flashing yellow; when they eat I think devour--
no languishing over meals--small vertebrates swallowed
--birds, dammit mother, the beauty of the kill.




(Published in Ophidian, 2011)

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Object Lesson
 Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more. 
Virginia Woolf


I am near the river.
I am at the river.
I am going down into the river
not with grace or
hope of yellowed sheets
pressed with rose oil
announcing my common descent
into the creases of an old age.
This is all I’ve ever considered:
a small square of liquid
surrounded on all sides
by the chaos only the
drowning can hear.




(Published in What the River Brings Anthology, Fae Press, 2012)

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