“I was a candle; / You: a bright, burning ball of light, / More brilliant than any of the small flames that had dared to kiss my wick. / Their flickering embers tried to scorch me into nothing.”
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“Not despite, you say, because / You’ve been looking in the bathroom mirror / of our Santa Fe adobe house, beneath stained vigas / wearing your orange sports bra / and half-buckled blue jeans”
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“At last, the void speaks / of all he took and never returned. / The white rabbit crawls forth from his rabbit / hole to pull you into the damp soil and live / as he does: in filth / and the stink of tobacco.”
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“my children, just as naked, / as now, just as submerged back when / we moved through the uncertainty of shelters, / sustaining by government crumbs, / their father is not my husband.”
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“Emily brought the weed. Emily also knew how to sculpt / a pipe with a pencil and some rolled tinfoil. What was it / with the dancers and gymnasts? Why did we always / have the drugs while you and the soccer girls gave each / other French braids and never stayed up late? At least / you brought a lighter.”
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“‘They needed to hear more about being with a woman. Thank you for sharing that,’ my friend, and the only other woman at the table, whispered to me.”
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“You watch, jaw slack, / as I birth old rage & / make it new. When I / have spilled forth all / that I can, spit flecked / lips loosening”
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“you can’t tell me / to reconcile / all the being i’ve done / kneeling at a pew / lined with past lives / i’ll think i’m there to celebrate / to sing”
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“You are harmless without antlers, / rare amidst hard tusk-teeth”
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“I can see four-leafed clovers in the grass because / I have magic in my blood. / My parents would say it’s because / we were Irish before we were American.”
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“Girls sometimes roil / with fear they say / we’d do anything / to avoid a sting run shrieking / like our mothers but they / mishear buzzing for screams”
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“Every time I whip this up, my husband says I smell and taste like pie. If you follow this recipe, your husband won’t be able to get enough of you and certainly won’t be thinking about sending you away.”
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“Places like these, you get pulled in, wound about like vines. Sometimes you bloom. Little prepares you for the pruning.”
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“The meat turned clay when you left. / You kept the eyes, like dried berries, / and wet capillaries still stuck / to your fingers like raw yolk.”
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“Sick of buying tissues, she started to use / two silver buckets she’d found one day / in a neighbour’s abandoned shed, not knowing / they belonged to a magician (now dead).”
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I have seen these hues / bring the deepening of my blues. / Inside the rows and lines of my swallowed up and overwhelmed disappearing. / Inside the measures of solitude that swam through sorrow, seeking something unnamed.
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“Just because my charms did not work didn't mean they were broken.”
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“Paint your own pictures. Masterpieces. Hang them. Invite him over to see. Watch his jaw hang. So you’re good, he says. Threatens to steal. Your creations. Your life.”
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