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
At 100 N. Jefferson St in Green Bay, City Hall: the ladies of democracy all have their backs turned when I walk in for early voting, attending to the copy machine, the phones, the trash, as though it’s an ordinary day with the office in order. Finally one of them, my age, with bangs, takes … More The Ladies of Democracy
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
And we will see there only ordinary things, constellations of dew, only miracles. I will meet you in the woods And we will carry there only our temporal minds, bodies, spirits, only these eternal. I will meet you in the woods And we will find there only things deep and green and growing, only decay. … More I Will Meet You in the Woods
Waterbugs unzipping the seam of river, hundreds of Vs opening before me, it is warm but I know what lies ahead the mirrored clouds afloat on the smooth surface in the late August twilight now sink to the riverbed like cotton candy autumn leaves while fat walleye heave and leave blooms of mud behind in … More Falling Through
All I have is a list, a promise of 11% back, and an unwieldy cold wet metal cart into which I throw the too-big chainsaw gloves for men, the joint compound to hold naked seams together. I’m trying to reconstruct true north. In the garden center aisle with the grass seed, dozens of little birds … More The Birds of Menard’s II
(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
Finally I drive away from that old house in the city where drama was spooling out across the little screen I held: alcohol, of course, family wounds, threats of suicide. I pocket that silenced screen like a take-out container of active angst – and I go to Menard’s, where I hear you can save big … More The Birds of Menard’s – I, uncut
I’ve cast the three who lived (thrown, broken, mending) upon the river of the world (flown, dammed, bending) they drift in solemn leisure (whether will or chance or fate) like shining broken windows (not shy not strong not vain) their wings catch specks of twilight (the eddies hold them fast). Three pulled toward the lake … More Casting Die
Halfway North 