FROM GLASSWORKS, FALL 2025
Snapshot
She looks into the camera, starting to smile,
shadows of leaves on her shoulders.
A black and white girl with a name
no one wrote on the back of this photo.
A girl wearing gloves, a brooch on her collar.
Tomorrow she’ll get a job selling perfume at Macy’s,
the man holding the camera will take her to dinner,
confess he’s met someone else, get down on one knee
with a ring. Tomorrow she’ll go swimming and drown.
Someone will buy her a fur, steal her purse,
break her nose, tell her she’s smart. One day
she’ll own clothespins. One Fourth of July
she’ll get drunk on one beer, step off a curb, snap her ankle.
She’ll walk with a twinge the rest of her life. Captured:
the dimple in her cheek, the frizz humidity puts in her hair.
She never married. Her husband adored her.
She was an only child, one of four girls with four girls
of her own. She was her mother’s angel,
her stepbrother’s past-midnight secret. She’s dead now,
or the whiskered great grandma of a boy with a ring
through his eyebrow embarrassed she lives in his house.
FROM THE AVENUE JOURNAL, ISSUE IX, 2024
Viewing the Books
The best students got to put them there at the start
of every summer—the best students working
with the best books. They had to be strong,
and excellent swimmers, to dive with the books
locked in the special cases, open to any page
the diver chose. They had to descend all the way to the bottom,
anchor everything there. So much was mystery--
the heaviness of the books, their steadfastness in water,
the futility of the heaving ocean trying to dislodge them.
They stayed there all summer, open in their cases,
swaying. The rest of us were allowed down one class at a time.
With uneven strokes and choppy kicks, we dove then struggled
onto the viewing platform, trying not to trip on our fins.
The day I went the wind was steady, the gray water
uneasy above and below. The platform bucked
in every direction. I was shivering, my eyes
stung with salt. At first, I saw nothing,
then only light, then the scene came into focus--
the transparent case, the book open inside it
like a treasure chest. I could read every word.
It was like being inside a volcano or seeing
a comet up close. Through my skin
I could feel my own black veins beating life
into every far place of my body.
FROM MID-AMERICAN REVIEW, 2023
Riddle
It is not the pond or the path around the pond or the path
into the woods, or the mask the sky wears at night or the eyes
that look through the mask. It is not the forked, gossiping tongue
of a storm or the stones hiding in the grass or the wren splashing
its blood on a window. Not the hungry girl or the crime of the caged man.
Imagine, instead, bread. Imagine the creak of a door, a pond
with no path, a path with no pond, a stream through the woods, the sky
changing out of its rough coat. Imagine stones waiting to be raised
into a tower, a scissor of geese that leaves no reflection or shadow.
Snapshot
She looks into the camera, starting to smile,
shadows of leaves on her shoulders.
A black and white girl with a name
no one wrote on the back of this photo.
A girl wearing gloves, a brooch on her collar.
Tomorrow she’ll get a job selling perfume at Macy’s,
the man holding the camera will take her to dinner,
confess he’s met someone else, get down on one knee
with a ring. Tomorrow she’ll go swimming and drown.
Someone will buy her a fur, steal her purse,
break her nose, tell her she’s smart. One day
she’ll own clothespins. One Fourth of July
she’ll get drunk on one beer, step off a curb, snap her ankle.
She’ll walk with a twinge the rest of her life. Captured:
the dimple in her cheek, the frizz humidity puts in her hair.
She never married. Her husband adored her.
She was an only child, one of four girls with four girls
of her own. She was her mother’s angel,
her stepbrother’s past-midnight secret. She’s dead now,
or the whiskered great grandma of a boy with a ring
through his eyebrow embarrassed she lives in his house.
FROM THE AVENUE JOURNAL, ISSUE IX, 2024
Viewing the Books
The best students got to put them there at the start
of every summer—the best students working
with the best books. They had to be strong,
and excellent swimmers, to dive with the books
locked in the special cases, open to any page
the diver chose. They had to descend all the way to the bottom,
anchor everything there. So much was mystery--
the heaviness of the books, their steadfastness in water,
the futility of the heaving ocean trying to dislodge them.
They stayed there all summer, open in their cases,
swaying. The rest of us were allowed down one class at a time.
With uneven strokes and choppy kicks, we dove then struggled
onto the viewing platform, trying not to trip on our fins.
The day I went the wind was steady, the gray water
uneasy above and below. The platform bucked
in every direction. I was shivering, my eyes
stung with salt. At first, I saw nothing,
then only light, then the scene came into focus--
the transparent case, the book open inside it
like a treasure chest. I could read every word.
It was like being inside a volcano or seeing
a comet up close. Through my skin
I could feel my own black veins beating life
into every far place of my body.
FROM MID-AMERICAN REVIEW, 2023
Riddle
It is not the pond or the path around the pond or the path
into the woods, or the mask the sky wears at night or the eyes
that look through the mask. It is not the forked, gossiping tongue
of a storm or the stones hiding in the grass or the wren splashing
its blood on a window. Not the hungry girl or the crime of the caged man.
Imagine, instead, bread. Imagine the creak of a door, a pond
with no path, a path with no pond, a stream through the woods, the sky
changing out of its rough coat. Imagine stones waiting to be raised
into a tower, a scissor of geese that leaves no reflection or shadow.
FROM AFTER ALL (2018, FUTURECYCLE PRESS)
Boys Who Cut the Legs Off Box Turtles
You’re sure these are the same two who smash
jack-o-lanterns up and down the street and name
your brother Four-Eyes and pinch your nipples
on the school bus, who steal baseball cards
kids have clothes-pinned to their bicycle spokes
and call them fairies when they cry. They come
at night over the fence into your backyard
to the pen with foil pie tins spilling lettuce,
the cement pool you helped your father pour
and shape where you like to wash the turtles’ shells
because the water makes the orange markings
shine like the lid of your grandmother’s jewelry box.
One leg off each of the babies. Both
hind legs off big Bo, which is the name
you’d give a dog if you had one. That morning
you go out to see how they are doing
with the lettuce and find them—beaks opening,
closing in panic that you do not understand
until you pick Bo up and see only his front legs
treading air. Your father promises if you take them
back to the woods where you caught them, new legs
will grow, so you do. You leave them under the bushes
near the pond, watch for a while as they do not move.
The next time you see those boys—who after
high school will be sent to Vietnam—you shoot them
your most unflinching evil eye, wish them missing
limbs and nightmares to help them think about
what they have done.
***
Before
I was an egg in two parts in my grandmother’s hand. I was an apple
in my grandfather’s hand. In the flood of a dream, I was the quavering
face of a stone. In a glass bowl, swaddled in a white towel, I was three
eggs that whispered to each other the old stories—wishes, black brooms,
earth that crumbled like cake in the mouths of lost children. I was the long
peel of an apple ratcheted over a blade. I was my grandmother’s apron
with its stain in the shape of an egg, my grandfather’s clean handkerchief
stamped into a perfect square under the weight of an iron. I was the black net
purse in my grandmother’s hand inside the silk of her glove, the space
inside of her hand as she took my grandfather’s hand the first time
he asked her to dance. Waiting for spring, I slept furled in the magnolia
blossom. All night I tapped at the kitchen window, waiting
for my pink hood to drop. I was the eye in the bowl of the rain barrel,
blinking with each drop of rain, witness to everything.
Boys Who Cut the Legs Off Box Turtles
You’re sure these are the same two who smash
jack-o-lanterns up and down the street and name
your brother Four-Eyes and pinch your nipples
on the school bus, who steal baseball cards
kids have clothes-pinned to their bicycle spokes
and call them fairies when they cry. They come
at night over the fence into your backyard
to the pen with foil pie tins spilling lettuce,
the cement pool you helped your father pour
and shape where you like to wash the turtles’ shells
because the water makes the orange markings
shine like the lid of your grandmother’s jewelry box.
One leg off each of the babies. Both
hind legs off big Bo, which is the name
you’d give a dog if you had one. That morning
you go out to see how they are doing
with the lettuce and find them—beaks opening,
closing in panic that you do not understand
until you pick Bo up and see only his front legs
treading air. Your father promises if you take them
back to the woods where you caught them, new legs
will grow, so you do. You leave them under the bushes
near the pond, watch for a while as they do not move.
The next time you see those boys—who after
high school will be sent to Vietnam—you shoot them
your most unflinching evil eye, wish them missing
limbs and nightmares to help them think about
what they have done.
***
Before
I was an egg in two parts in my grandmother’s hand. I was an apple
in my grandfather’s hand. In the flood of a dream, I was the quavering
face of a stone. In a glass bowl, swaddled in a white towel, I was three
eggs that whispered to each other the old stories—wishes, black brooms,
earth that crumbled like cake in the mouths of lost children. I was the long
peel of an apple ratcheted over a blade. I was my grandmother’s apron
with its stain in the shape of an egg, my grandfather’s clean handkerchief
stamped into a perfect square under the weight of an iron. I was the black net
purse in my grandmother’s hand inside the silk of her glove, the space
inside of her hand as she took my grandfather’s hand the first time
he asked her to dance. Waiting for spring, I slept furled in the magnolia
blossom. All night I tapped at the kitchen window, waiting
for my pink hood to drop. I was the eye in the bowl of the rain barrel,
blinking with each drop of rain, witness to everything.
FROM WHERE THE WORLD BEGINS (2015, FINISHING LINE PRESS)
Ghost Stories
This house was theirs. They sat close
to this stove, stood by this window.
When they walk these rooms,
the air thickens, leaves a motion
like the shiver of a flower
with a bee inside. They sigh beside you
in your bed, jealous of your dreams.
In September, they tear the pages from your schoolbooks
to make the teachers say you lie.
They toss pecans at the windows
when rain is coming. Their unhappiness
blows the Christmas candles out.
You know them all—your grandpa’s cousin Ed,
shot in a bar over the price of a wagon.
He turns up the flame under the soup pot
so it boils into the grate. His boy, also Ed,
killed in the mine. The Darby baby,
who comes when you can’t sleep,
his eyes pools of reproach,
tiny cold touch like the prick of a needle. His mother
Maylene, taken by flu, who stands where a mirror once hung,
combing and combing her long hair.
And Uncle Luther, that crazy moonshiner.
When the preacher comes for supper, old Luther knocks
the Bible to the floor, moans like a cat dying lonely.
Just the wind, one of you whispers,
as around the table every head bows to pray
a grace that lasts so long the gravy curdles.
Ghost Stories
This house was theirs. They sat close
to this stove, stood by this window.
When they walk these rooms,
the air thickens, leaves a motion
like the shiver of a flower
with a bee inside. They sigh beside you
in your bed, jealous of your dreams.
In September, they tear the pages from your schoolbooks
to make the teachers say you lie.
They toss pecans at the windows
when rain is coming. Their unhappiness
blows the Christmas candles out.
You know them all—your grandpa’s cousin Ed,
shot in a bar over the price of a wagon.
He turns up the flame under the soup pot
so it boils into the grate. His boy, also Ed,
killed in the mine. The Darby baby,
who comes when you can’t sleep,
his eyes pools of reproach,
tiny cold touch like the prick of a needle. His mother
Maylene, taken by flu, who stands where a mirror once hung,
combing and combing her long hair.
And Uncle Luther, that crazy moonshiner.
When the preacher comes for supper, old Luther knocks
the Bible to the floor, moans like a cat dying lonely.
Just the wind, one of you whispers,
as around the table every head bows to pray
a grace that lasts so long the gravy curdles.