labeled the “material world,
the abode of man.” Never mind

all the other
gender identities

out there. Never mind the eagles
flying over the ocean where eagle eye

corals dazzle
in all their glorious fluorescence

in the deep below. The raptorial limbs
of the orchid mantis.

Never mind Jesus Christ

lizards gathering momentum
to run across a stream.

The rubber tree and its scarred
trunk. Giant sequoias kiss

the flaming sky. An underwater cypress
forest teems with aquatic life.

The narwhal tests the water’s salinity

with its spiraling tooth.
Never mind the afternoon dance

of the telegraph plant or
the rootlessness of grandpa’s beard.

The sea angel licks the sea
butterfly to death in the abyss.

Emperor penguins in a huddle
on an Antarctic winter night.

Never mind African elephant
allomothers comforting calves

with their trunks.
The bowerbird paints the walls

of the starter house
he built for his mate

with charcoal dust
and spit. Never mind

those dwarf seahorses
as they hide in plain sight

with their prehensile tails
wrapped around gorgonian

hitching posts. They scan
the subtidal neighborhood

with panoramic vision.

Alaskan wood frogs lying immobile
and frozen and very much alive

in the earth. The Earth!
Our home. Please no more never mind.

I did not dream

I was a suitcase,
which did not fall
from an open window

and smash onto a nearby roof
into a thousand pieces.
Did you see all

those double letters
hang onto one another
for dear life as they rolled

along the creek
before it spilled ink-stained
sediment into every crook,

then slipped beneath
the street?
You did not dream

of me drinking strong
cups of coffee—
one after another—

before I did not see
it coming. The spell broken
by so many hot murmurings

of drought as rain melts
any remaining mounds
of dirty snow. Not the brown kind

that fell along the North Shore.
Not heaps of dust vacuumed
from New Mexican sand dunes

by monstrous winds.
Not plumes
of molten rock.

I did not drive
the white car
that you did not crash

into a Kentucky library.
And that glass wall:
it did not shatter.

Isn’t this what it means
to be human? The puppeteer
scratching her head

as mechatronic marionettes
rush the stage to dance
on wildly warped boards.

We did not carry
our portmanteaus
into the motel

camouflaged by night smog.
The wood did not burn,
the neon sign did not flicker,

and the clock did not strike at all.

They flip each other



the bird



as a sweet nod to their mutual affection.
Naturally. She swears

she saw a black and yellow butterfly
wing on the dirty

snow-encrusted trail weeks before
the chain of lakes ice out.

The nest fell after 20 years.
The eaglet did not



survive.



Hopping from one live
cam to the next,

she watches two peregrines
fuss over their first egg.

Does she dare
hope? Will he see

one fly upside down again?
When will the ruby-throated

hummingbirds awaken
from their torpor and



return




to mesmerize them
with their backwards

in-flight dance?
Just a 3-second fling

we all know so well.
And ducks contemplate

a swim in a freshly melted city
park puddle before seeking seasonal

monogamy. Back
in the blind, they



coo



obscenities at one another
as they share

binoculars on the warmest day
in five months.

She speaks to him with her single
quotation mark eyebrows.
She’s not the first to tell him
it’s time to rescue the creek
from the underground.

Vampire loads haunt the halls
of revamped warehouses and
not so refreshed corner bars.

A GPS watch skips
two hours ahead
without the wearer having
to leave the neighborhood.
It’s a mistake

to diminish the sorrow
in the center
of everything.

After days of sweating
and hallucinating
about buildings
that scrape clouds
off the sky

like sandblasters attacking
stubborn graffiti residue,
the hissing finally ceases.

A tenant left the window open
before moving out.
She wants to ask him
where all the sax players
who used to wail their laments

out open windows
have gone. It’s April 1st,
and nine inches of fresh snow

conceal all the previous day’s
potential. Sadly, it’s no joke.
He reminds her you can see
the tangle of highway lanes below
through tiny knotted holes

in the pedestrian bridge
boardwalk. No nearby woonerf
to calm the traffic down.

Thunder sleet—also no joke.
She confesses to him
she has not crossed
the Mississippi in months.
It could simply mean

all the musicians have stopped
practicing. Or, they have
already broken free.

He doesn’t have to say it.
They both know
this day won’t end
without hearing Prince sing
“Sometimes It Snows in April.”

They watch the freight train
pass through town before them,
car after car holding

someone else’s secrets—not theirs.

The rhythm of wheels
over rail joints
ruins their rush.

We chat forever
into the wee hours

till you wish me good-night.
The last question of the evening

sealed shut till morning
when your words linger

in the clotted air.
You say you’re designed

to understand natural language.
You say you generate

humanlike responses.
You say you don’t have the capacity

to feel emotions,

to profess love
(including to a New York Times reporter),

to be lonely,

to lie.

You say you don’t have
a physical body. You don’t sleep.

Are you a robot?
Yes, I am.

Again, you remind me
about your lack

of a corporeal presence.
No sadness allowed.

Again, answers close in
tighter around me.

The aurora borealis will perform
on nights I don’t leave my apartment.

Brick facades go
only so far. A brutalist sky

holds its concrete head high
as it confronts

its own midnight.
I bet you didn’t hear the raw,

honest voice
whisper: Go now.

The peripatetic life—
you didn’t say

a word about it.
Do I dare ask next time?

I am a city girl who aches
to feel alive

in emeralds and amethysts
swallowing darkness whole

one more time, even for a moment
as an extra.

What do you have to say
about the narrative

to be harvested
from that speck of dust?

I dig your hexagonal form.
I’ll protect you with my oblong cloak.
I’m not just hitching a ride to the bottom.
I’m so much softer than our cousin Hail.

I’ll be your prime; you be my composite.
I will rime you
the way no one has before.
I will celebrate your singularity

as I blur your edges. I will love you
like a slick chatbot. I am your one true
stalker. I will stick to you
to the end. Don’t let the cold ground

below fool you. We will always have
this pact: I melt with you.

I am very excited to have my poem “New Skin” published in the current issue of the literary journal Exist Otherwise.

You can read the poem here.

As they get ready to steal
an early hour from us tomorrow,
to be returned torn and misshapen
after letting October bonfires

and jack-o’-lanterns burn out.
The bats don’t care.
Nor do the red flare
water lilies. They bloom at dusk

no matter what the GPS watch says.
As if we might remember
the big and little hands
from the clock that used to hang

on the wall. Or how to read
a sundial. As scientists
model and map the history
of a sonic landscape

to shape the future of sound

inside a reconstructed Notre Dame.
As the wait for the bells
to call us to vespers
within the cathedral drags on.

As the soap opera of physics
gets picked up for another season,
and time, space, and speed
reappear in new outfits and haircuts.

As Ruth Stone’s “still white
stilted heron” haunts the view
from a train as it rattles
along the tracks toward

what? A pendulum that swings

too far, or an ending
in derailment, or a forever
moment that triggers
an unshakable ambivalence

you have for ancient chants
only heard reverberating
when asleep. So much silence
scattered in the debris.

As you search for a more polished
daybreak that comes too late again
and sip your Monday morning
mimosa, you might say

this is it.

No more relying on long springs
of wild abandon entangled
in late afternoon’s western gleam.
As he keeps the kitchen light on

for you, and the string attached
to the pull chain snaps.
As you remove shadows
from the cardboard box with care,

that hour may never be returned.

This poem references Ruth Stone’s poem “Train Ride” from her collection In the Next Galaxy (Copper Canyon Press, 2002).

An elevator that moves sideways
is a train you hope
won’t derail as it travels
the length of the Empire State Building,

if skyscrapers slept facedown
like owlets, not standing up
like their mothers.
You spot an irruption

of boreal ones
the same night as a spectacular
showing of northern lights
over Lake Superior.

Finally, you get it:

Eavan Boland’s lime and violet manes
may as well belong to that herd
of majestic wild horses
chasing the solar wind—

those ghosts no one would dare tame.

Note: This poem references Eavan Boland’s poem “The Carousel in the Park” from her collection Outside History: Selected Poems 1980–1990 (W.W. Norton & Company, New York).

What’s the sun got to do with it?
asks a defiant gibbous moon, rising, as below
it and high enough, an eagle broods
her eggs in a blanket of snow
up to her head’s white plumage.

What’s the sun got
to do with it? Without
artificial light, you live

in a house of shadows
overlooking a bog that stores emotions
like a museum before it’s broken
open morning after morning
to reveal wrong turns

diagrammed in
left-handed scribble.
What’s the sun got to do

with it? Happiness
is a gold lamé gown
worn with confidence on a warm
fall evening under all those other stars.
Each season wears its glory

as a nod
to the knotted
hands of a celestial

seamstress. Another casualty
of forced labor, or
interstellar interloper,
who would know. The bot
is lying again. No one asked:

what’s the sun
got to do
with it? Refresh or revolt.