Nothing about it is fair. Little darling, baby bird. Smashed up crumpled on the side of the highway, one wing detached from its iridescent body. Blood like the rust that collects on your grandfather’s old boat, the one right now bobbing on a lake a hundred miles north of here. You promised as he lay dying of rotten tumors that you’d keep her going strong. But you’ve never taken that boat anywhere.

Little darling, baby bird…   Read more

I

The blackbirds, frogs, and mulberry leaves appear each spring, but I didn’t notice them the April I was too heavy to walk, eager not for berries but a sweet new baby girl. And I didn’t notice them the April I was too heavy to move at all, weighed by depression when my husband’s surgery went wrong.

Healthy this year, I mark the chorus of frogs, discordant…  Read more

my father held my grandfather over a river slick with careful fire.
from the banks, Cuyahoga spurt orange peel & sweetcorn.
when he found a town with my name in Ohio he took the turnpike through

to Virginia & the Gulf. eagles lingered above like their country did not matter.
an armadillo in Appalachia scared him half to death. my grandfather
dies the same way… Read more