bite an ordinary weapon we wield
against the shrinking of mouths.
TRYING
I’d forgotten how much
I like to grow things, I shout
to him as he passes me to paint
the basement. I’m trellising
the tomatoes in what’s called
a Florida weave. Later, we try
to knock me up again. We do it
in the guest room because that’s
the extent of our adventurism
in a week of violence in Florida
and France. Afterward,
the sun still strong though lowering
inevitably to the horizon, I check
on the plants in the back, my
fingers smelling of sex and tomato
vines. Even now, I don’t know much
about happiness. I still worry
and want an endless stream of more,
but some days I can see the point
in growing something, even if
it’s just to say I cared enough.
ON A PINK MOON
I take out my anger
And lay its shadow
On the stone I rolled
Over what broke me.
I plant three seeds
As a spell. One
For what will grow
Like air around us,
One for what will
Nourish and feed,
One for what will
Cling and remind me—
We are the weeds.
THE RAINCOAT
When the doctor suggested surgery
and a brace for all my youngest years,
my parents scrambled to take me
to massage therapy, deep tissue work,
osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine
unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,
and move more in a body unclouded
by pain. My mom would tell me to sing
songs to her the whole forty-five-minute
drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-
five minutes back from physical therapy.
She’d say that even my voice sounded unfettered
by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,
because I thought she liked it. I never
asked her what she gave up to drive me,
or how her day was before this chore. Today,
at her age, I was driving myself home from yet
another spine appointment, singing along
to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,
and I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet.
THE VULTURE & THE BODY
On my way to the fertility clinic,
I pass five dead animals.
First a raccoon with all four paws to the sky
like he’s going to catch whatever bullshit load
falls on him next.
Then, a grown coyote, his golden furred body soft against the white
cement lip of the traffic barrier. Trickster no longer,
an eye closed to what’s coming.
Close to the water tower that says “Florence, Y’all,” which means
I’m near Cincinnati, but still in the bluegrass state,
and close to my exit, I see
three dead deer, all staggered but together, and I realize as I speed
past in my death machine that they are a family. I say something
to myself that’s between a prayer and a curse—how dare we live
on this earth.
I want to tell my doctor about how we all hold a duality
in our minds: futures entirely different, footloose or forged.
I want to tell him how lately, it’s enough to be reminded that my
body is not just my body, but that I’m made of old stars and so’s he,
and that last Tuesday,
I sat alone in the car by the post office and just was
for a whole hour, no one knowing how to find me, until
I got out, the sound of the car door shutting like a gun,
and mailed letters, all of them saying, Thank
