Am I a creature of cocoon?
I pupate myself and wait for later.

When you are ready, you will scrape the velvet from your antlers. The hours of scratch and file will be hot and unforgiving; the world will not be kind to you today.

why do drug names sound like wizards?
my son asks one of his questions that answers
itself and he catches me up on science:

in a shroud of quiet
cloudy as paper
and cold as well water

We were both shopping at Trader Joe’s, Swan
and Grant, around 3 on Tuesday, the 16th.
You were a vision, a snow white blonde…

They are sweet
red and green, heavy on our vines,
plump fruit dropping
like soft stones, ripe for the press

I appeared in this body
as a single note, a 440 A, soon
arpeggiating into a mockingbird’s
verdant melody, the buzzchirp

For only a moment it seems
there is movement at the bottom
of the page, as if an insect
is crawling across the paper

My mother shaved her head and performed an ugliness in the kitchen, an exorcism of Cunt and Bitch. She heard our shadows say Ugly and committed to form.

At twenty I practice unlearning her body.
The same black roots spilling
down my scalp. The same hand over
my mouth except it is my hand

I could not / bring myself / to rob graves
I quietly gave up / on my own / extremities
starved / for attention / numb, then life-
less & yes / & last / the heart

If you slip
a bowl beneath
a hen to catch
an egg as it slips

I always thought of a cold storage
in space where souls could hibernate
take their own re-birthing time
to find another suitable body.

I’ll trudge off the wet field with the team, hand
my gear to the equipment manager, peel off my
sweaty uniform, and lose myself in the mayhem
of the post-game locker room

Yes, I dream of monsters,
but they’re not what you think.
Instead of slobbering fangs,
they give me Lucky Charms,

Driving after rain through time’s
morning, the streets wept clean. Damp-
stained bark of the sycamores:
cicatrix of what stays.

I did not know
that words
might lift themselves
from their paper perches