A Little Turning

It’s difficult but not impossible to kiss when you are both wearing baseball caps, you with your wet braids along your neck, your bodies warm in the cool wet grass, the hem of your pants soaked to your knees where you stand between parked cars beyond the rows and rows of grapevines in the inked-in … More A Little Turning

Dung Beetle Polka

So my daylist is earnest indie sad girl carnival oatmeal Sunday and meanwhile advertised to me is a sweatshirt with a blue heron in a beanie that I trip over myself to order, and the throughline is a polka for this dung beetle plucking up the detritus of the human race (one two) patting it … More Dung Beetle Polka

Rain on the River

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

Elemental

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

Interstitial

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

Bliss

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

Chickadee Song

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