i. I came to Earth in the Summer of Love, September 1969, just after Apollo 11 carried Neil and Buzz to the proper side of the moon, (the one she’s shown to us from the start). They left bootprints all across her face. This morning, almost as an afterthought, NPR tells me that the … More The Jade Rabbit 2 Tells Me My Fortune
Lulu and Nana are drafts; edited before they are published, in secret, He is bent over translucent twins in a cabin by the fire while snow skims the sky outside, He takes his red pen and his scissors named CRISPR and he snips their DNA here and then there like a gloved boxer making … More He Defends Gene Edited Babies
Buttery light spread/ on this white November wall/ winter’s knife is slow.
Behind me a man at the Minneapolis airport says: “I’ll see you at the Midwest Poultry Show” except what I hear is not that but “Midwest Poetry Show” which makes slightly less sense but it’s too late, I am already thinking of their sleepless night, all the poets waking before dawn and coaxing their … More Midwest Poultry Show
Auld Jack Devine, as afternoon bows to the long shadows of a June evening, stands there, then, in the green and wet field, as they all are green and wet, appraising these Americans searching County Mayo for Jack Devine, clutching a damp ship’s manifest: Well. Aye. Ye found him. Auld Jack, eighty if a day, … More Irish Evening
It’s a Thursday in May after five when I swing into the Piggly Wiggly with two bikes on the back of my SUV, and the dog inside; The woman slicing my deli ham struggles with the wrapper on the summer sausage, limps like her hip is bad, too; she paces, trapped behind the glass cage; … More Crivitz Piggly Wiggly Philosophy
So Mercutio cried – and before and since and ever, the years start over in darkness, the face of the earth turned away from the sun; The calendar is a ragged thread of a winter sweater snagged on a fencepost nail; it’s a ball of yarn spooling out into the future, bouncing across the kempt … More Ask For Me Tomorrow And You Shall Find Me a Grave Man!
Winter broke and entered years ago, pressing icy fingers against our skin, wandering under our shirts, searching for our hearts, listening as we slowly wound down – we were watches kept in a drawer of an empty house. But I think you must have jacked open some painted-over lead-poisoned window, somewhere, deep inside, (maybe in … More Breaking and Entering
I. After we see paintings of the sea, and moonlight, and doom by Winslow Homer, after we work on income tax forms and insurance and eat carnitas burritos and watch Netflix, I don’t feel well, it’s not a bellyache or a hangover or a fever or something that CVS can fix. it’s like this existential … More Wes and Jesus Come up Empty
I. On the way up to the lake house, the back of the vehicle jammed with things of this earth: snacks, casseroles, a snowboard, three pairs of snow pants, a snow shovel for the ice rink, skates, sleeping bags, water, wine – and after passing barn upon barn, acre upon acre of crumbling stone and … More 22 Years Later
Halfway North 