(for Gretchen) The thing about knowing about gravity, (this is a hard thing not to know), about skinned knees and errant ground balls and legs broken after launching from stairs – is that sometimes when you see the body suspended, mid-air, (the cliff or the dock or the rooftop behind), all you can think of … More Gravity
They say that dogs can sniff out COVID in passengers at the Helsinki airport, offering a paw, or lying down – (even in this job, dogs are on our side – “I’m sorry,” they say with a paw, “you’re positive, but I will lie here with you.”) with near 100% accuracy. Maybe they smell it … More In Which Dogs Sniff out the Virus and Save the World, And Also Get Treats
I stand a moment in the space you left, while summer air curls through the windows wide – I, reconciling, make the empty bed, the sun lies on the laundered sheets and sighs; Your desk, your chest, your closet – clean and spare, these books have all been read, the records played – the things … More Leaving for College in a Year Marked by Plague Calls for a Sonnet
It’s after eight in the evening, and in this antique light, the Queen Anne’s Lace along the roads watches the sinking sun – hundreds of tatted blooms close up like praying hands, like thousands of empty teacups drained and set upon the sideboard of the day. In the morning they’ll open again to catch the … More That Summer of the Pandemic, It Was All Falling Apart, It was All Coming Together
If we were still in the old world, the six-weeks ago one, right now a girl with a make-up pencil might be standing before you with a mock frown – “stand still!” she’d say, drawing crow lines on your face, not crow’s feet, but lines to make you look like a crow, so you could … More There is no Wizard
Halfway North 