Excerpts

“A cargo of roses washing up on a shore; forty hands held out to touch me, could not be more beautiful than she is tonight, her eyes reflecting light, turning to the violets, the mantelpiece, the window and the night.”

“Driving to Hotels for Lunch, the Day My Father Died”

Phoebe: A Journal of Literary Arts

“My sister remembers childhood as standing up to her waist in mist, no one else around. My anger toward my mother is fog through which I barely see her. When she puts her arms around me, nothing burns the mist off. Nothing comes clear.”

“Absent Parents”

Evening Street Review

“Make a glad noise, it is spring. Up from the snow the crocus has sprung, fresh from its rubbery root. High above, in pyramids of love, the sparrows also are singing.”

“Make a Glad Noise”

Litbreak Magazine

“I tell him I teach, read, write poetry. He says he shoots rabbit, deer, the Japanese. Buys American. Runs a farm. The afternoon lingers, like a finger on a rim. On it our bodies buzz: legs tense; haunches high; needle points poised.”

“Iowa Heat”

Evening Street Review

“By day we are free to paint, as if forever. By night we weave through the stars, dragging our umbilical cords like kite strings behind us. No longer beautiful. No longer tied to hard necessity, tender is the night we share, provisioned for eternity."

“Floating, for Eva”

Tusculum Review

“We both made love that night as if it were time for children; both created the climate for life to cling to this firmament: me.”

“In Love with Mike”

Broken Plate

“Halfway through the ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn,’ your eyes slipped down the barrel of your cigarette to taste between my thighs.”

“Adultery”

Broken Plate

“Only look through that slat and you will see wild flowers dancing in the field below, bending their heads by miraculous device of thin green stems held up.”

“By Some God Meticulously Kept”

Delmarva Review

“From a distance I saw a frog, standing like a soldier in a field of summer grass.”

“Blunt Force”

Streetlight Magazine

“The sky was gray, and grayer still the clouds, pulled like a shroud across.”

“A Snowy Day”

BoomerLitMag

“She has squeezed every drop from the lime of June, every bit of it lapped on the held-out tongue.”

"Genesis of Dalloway”

Crack the Spine

“When you said you didn’t like his gun, he hit you; when he locked you out, your fist smashed the glass of his pick- up truck. Even then he didn’t react: your skin pushed back like a lip and blood poured from you, smoking like heaven.”

“Summer”

We Will Not Be Silenced