Driving alone across the country, I never
once got sleepy, oh, once, only an hour
after leaving home, thinking aloud, This
will be a hard trip, but the car was home
to an alertness ever forming.

On the road, stopping whenever I wanted to,
going exactly ten miles over the speed
limit, eschewing cruise control, wanting… Read more

Quietude is not the same thing as quiet.
My hydrangea is white.
Disease scavenges the body, but stress
strips the soul, brings it right to the whitened
spiritual bone. Is quietus, not like death,
but calm?
My feet rest on the floor.
A whelm of emotion hardly kept in check
brings a rictus, a ringing, a shortness
of breath.
My dog sleeps in the sunspot on the rug.
This supercharged stillness… Read more

After you were indicted, the newspapers exploded. My mind
flashes the burning imprint of your face above the fold, though
more likely, you were an afterthought of a headline curled deep
into the recesses of Section A and rolled into a tube on the door step
of your home, the home you built with your husband of seven years,

the husband who took you from my Saturday afternoon trips with
you… Read more