But lo here is hot coffee and from the corner Nina Simone croons and there is a snowy slope to the silent white river stopped from its babble by a sliver of flat white sky like a shushing finger against chattering lips – This cabin is already stove through with falling pines or burned to … More The Cup is Already Broken
when the rain lessened we hauled our plastic Adirondack chairs in one hand and Old Fashioneds in the other down to the river, down to the dock, and sat there – the dock or the river just beneath the current lifting the water through the slats soaking our shorts from below while the rain continued … More Rain on the River
There is a tiny garter snake coiled in a slat on the dock where the flood laid down a tangle of grass; when I pass by it darts up and glides across the boards and falls dramatically, comically, into the reeds. From my paddle board the river is glassine, the setting sun’s reflection a smooth … More While the World Slowly Fragments
I. The weekend after the spring snowstorm that brought down trees with with wind and weight we are all at the gas station filling up our portable tanks for the generators before we hit the dollar store for candlesticks, bottled water, batteries. The checkout girl tells me “I made my kids go for a run.” … More Elemental
These steady lake waves come near like a dog teasing with a stick – roll up to our pedals, retreat, roll, retreat, while we crash with nubby tires down the thin spine of beach, the heaving water to the east a balm, a coolant, a passage, a lifter-up, a dragger-down, a dark and silent grave. … More Interstitial
On my way north, once again, Highway E curves into a 25 mph crawl past a post office and a closed taxidermy shop, toward the county building that was once my elementary school that now holds snowplows. A hawk flies low over the road toward the sun setting nearly in the south – so close … More Bliss
Rising out of the galaxies as though she’s just woken up, mane in a tangle, unsure of what she did the night before – what was in those astral drinks, whose boots are under her bed, what stars will be birthed hence, their light showing up in the lenses long after the humans have exterminated … More Euclid Captures the Horsehead Nebula
Her hands flit about in my mouth, landing tooth upon tooth, sharp beaky instruments scraping and picking tiny morsels – she chirps to me as she works – how her boys shot their BB guns at chickadees; “If you shoot it, you eat it,” she told them, which seems like as good a rule as … More Chickadee Song
in this snow-dark wood i by wolves am torn asunder raise your glass to their howl for today i followed after the tracks of an absent otter who soundless belly-slid toward one round black hole on this ice-trimmed river from the fragile edge; there all tracks end, there always one moment perches on the brink … More if tonight
In early October along the river’s edge, deer hooves have printed the mud with quotation marks, although they had nothing to report. They drank the cold water in silence and slipped back into the woods. It’s not yet five o’clock but the sun is already stumbling sideways and falling behind the Wisconsin treeline, rays flailing … More Undone
Halfway North 