Ode: Age Spots On suspended platforms          outside the apartment building across the street, masons           move about in an order seemingly chosen by chance.           Two to a platform, they break open patchy sections of brick           and then mortar in replacements, the new bricks a tad darker—           haphazard but thorough work proceeding as if there’s no plan           to finish.                       Isn’t that how skin is— cells replaced by new ones      …

The Dunes When I told him of the deer skull,he leaned in, so I took him backthrough where I’d been exploringunder oaks and down game trails to the dunes where it was—the single vertebra and the eyelessthing, egg-like and bleached by the sun,its broken jaw a couple hands away, and I watched him lift it from the sandto wrap as a relic and nest in his sackto carry home until he found enough bonesfor his art, and although I never knew its weight, I try to remember how it felt,the deep light over that sea, the whitebowl embalmed in the bag, as I put my handto the head of my…

Tidepool: Elegy 1. Waves fall into themselves all night long. I dream ofinsomniac children playing at the water’s edge, darkcircles under their eyes – so many unseen deathsbattering against their sleep. 2. Grim skies, grey, no shadows, rain-pocked sand. I listento sea water slip down rock. Drops hit the surface of atidepool. I am there for the moment when the surfaceclears: body and thoughts, still. 3. The drop moves through the seams of tendon, networksof blood, marrow, into a cave without light, arrivesat a cache of smooth black stones placed in a circle bygrief. 4. A sculpin with huge black eyes takes in the worldfrom the safety of a red…

Anecdote The first year, students would come up to mebetween class while we all stood outside the little kindergarten that had been convertedinto the English faculty in the hinterlands of the former Soviet Union and say, Mr. Kurt,tell us please an anecdote. Life until then hadn’t lent itself to Chekhov, let alone Turgenevor Tolstoy, but I’d lived a slew of anecdotes. The students would lean in close and laughat the end, glancing at one another, one maybe balling his hand in a fist and clipping a neighboron the shoulder, before they would thank me and shuffle back through unlit halls paintedwith ducks and dancing bears to their next class. My…

Edith And Lot’s wife did look back….and I love her for that, because it was so human.Kurt Vonnegut What do you remember? the stench of burning hair               a chlorine yellow hazedisobedience of the screen doorslam of my backward glance Stand closer      listen to the rasp of my breathas I become salt            tastethe mineral of my fingertipscrystals sharp on your tongue It’s not too late to turn back watch me bid farewell              to my daughterstheir bright bodies twistingin the eucalyptus I am here with the linens still dampmy palms frayed lace   …

Prayer for the Broken This is for the rusty outlet in aroom no one uses, for the crackedwindow without a small face peeringthrough, wishing for a snow day. Blessings on the damaged plant Ileft outside the night of the firsthard frost, on both its hopeful greenshoots and its withered brown leaves. Good fortune to the worn yellowwallpaper, carefully drawn designscurling away from the plaster likean unraveling bandage. Tidings of great joy to my linedface and troubled mouth. There isbeauty in decay, if we only learn toshift our gaze and love the scars. This song is for you, transienceand imperfection, marking oursurfaces with the passage of timeto remind us we are…

Train Horn Clairvoyance I need them,the train horns, every day. Whether it’s the low distant groan of slow freight or right next to me,blasted through my head, they pull me up through the gutter water the thick veneer of human spoilto a clearing, not a place but sound that shreds all physical matter,tearing through bodylike god speaking and I have to rememberwe invented them. Reliably when I’m sickened by life and people,worn to an outline,I’ll hear its clairvoyance, and though I only halfway understand,I can’t disobey its rage,its command to defy any and all. Then the locomotive shakes pastour frozen hallucinationand I’m saved, I’m whole, I’m sane.   Catherine French…

Giving Notice A day can be picked up,a few weeks later,like a warm drink in a paper bag. I had driven to the conservancyto move alone on the hillunder the hawks’ thermals, the sky a blue bone,a tight curvature over the lesser arcof the meadow, its dried, bleached stalksand old grass.Through this brittleness, the Eastern bluebirdwas the deeper mover, darting,making his rhythmic plush. June Sketch On the back porch, my husbandgets ready to cut my hair,a tenderness discovered by accidentduring the lockdown. He dusts my bangsfrom my eyes, then leans inand uses a voice I knowas my mother’s.                        …

Widow’s Weeds The winter’s exit was earlier than usual,perennials nosing through the dirt, sunlightlike a healing hand, bird-silence erased in fitful songs. My widowed motherspends her declining years gardening,her husband long planted like a bulb, her children windcast seeds. Her friends mostly underground. Time is that sunlight a door closes on.Dressed in an old blue down coat, faded jeans, gloves, spattered white tennis shoes,she loves the simplicity of weeding,her arthritic fingers dig at their tenacity. Each troublesome root-mass gets a good shakethe way regret, unabsolved, works at her,what she’d said to her children, her husband. She digs on dirty knees until the wheelbarrow’s fulland spills on the grass. When the sweat…

Typewriter The man with his hands on his hips standing in the center of the room cannot find his mother’s typewriter. It is months after her passing and he’s angry at himself for not thinking of it sooner but the damn thing has to be somewhere. She used it for letters and memos and outlines of plans and typed his college essays on it, too. He loved the off-center keys and how certain letters appeared to be caught on the battleground between her and whatever war needed fighting. Her fingers wore the ink off those keys. He misses her voice, its drawl and delight. That machine held her voice in…