Good weather lives in one season— stretch of blue patched with unraveling cotton threads, sprinkling yellow gold dust on our eyelashes— South Bay summer in San Diego. That's one reason, perhaps the only string that ties anyone down to the root. I remember the stained-glass windows of Saint Charles, light trickled through Mary, Joseph, and Jesus and their pet lamb…

A distance of hours I dam myself low tide on the mudflats we drive home without you key in the lock turns incoming tide, raw surges over the threshold – rolls in, wets my feet, my weary knees Mama don't leave, back then toddler terror your chubby arms rooted in my soothing soil too soon your limbs brawned you…

Like a mouse my daughter burrows. "Here" pats her bed "come read with me." A satin sausage crowns her head. "Heatless curlers" she explains. All day she's been longing to try her new lip gloss, all day I've been longing for a quiet space. Book open to Haas I silently sigh, squeeze her hand, curl next to her. The answer was…

Facing backwards, slap of Northwest gusts on my shoulder blades – blustered the broad flat bones of my back I flap like a sail, tossed. Loose in the wind scouring the land a million ten million particles rush, scraping the soil, raking our cheeks, the bite of an infinite number of teeth. Did you know that loose dust strikes sand moored to the ground and vibrating suspends…

To Lydia, who debates whether to stop chemotherapy I climb up the steep steps to the third floor the perch where you now spend your thinning days beyond blackened branches the day lays its weariness each rising tread pulling me down. It's cold. It's gray. It's February cold gray the steps slip from under my feet. I knock, no answer, I open the door…

The winter that you started losing your keys Lucy and I went to the circus rocked in our seats popcorn on our laps we watched the lights sink into the void. Up in the white light I saw myself tightrope: tightwire highwire slackwire skywalk – I used to run on the mountain's knife edge my feet weaving tricks on featherless wings – like her in her red dress I never flinched not even once did I…

tank half-full left in a vacant lot stir in bed, turn over and whisper to pavement my tenderness hardens like steel love a dull chore, an errand to check off my hands blue cold metal that drive automatic your frame prone to shatter like glass my iron melts, warps into a foreign form hesitant fire, you etch my chest my frosted palms, mechanical press,

Tonight my bed bites like a glacial ocean my hands bony blue I summon a prayer: a mindtrick: I try to notice five things: five I can't see: four I can't touch: three I can't hear: two I can't smell: one I can't taste: frost pillars in my mouth: my daughter's warm breath next to me. This I can feel: When I was a child…

I wanted to touch your mother of pearl Come closer you said and I did iridescent your silver bright your polish smooth I wanted to keep you forever. When I was a child I found a blue mussel its nacre its purple sparkle in my life so pretty this jewel I took it home with me with my little finger…

In scarlet I met you/ in large ruffled bloom I popped in your garden/ in bright saturation primary colors the palette knife clean/ brilliance/ warmth/ to hold you in. Summer to Fall dormant in Winter/ my seeds nestled deep in the ground/ settled my roots starting to stretch geological/ cosmic/ away from your reach. Where have you gone? you asked.

On the West shore the morning after the aftersurge taps the hull of our skiff ripple rhyme lull of slow mouthed Os we look at the ruin in disbelief. Like gravel our love tossed on the beach our precious oysters gaping like gargoyles What is one to breathe what is one to gasp for when gills have been mangled and…

When I was thirty, I could easily tie my sneakers while standing on one foot like a flamingo without ever thinking, as I do now, "Wow, those core strength exercises really have helped improve my balance!" Back then, it never occurred to me that the lone sixty-year-old in my grad school class might feel invisible—I had never heard of, or even thought about "the invisibility of older women"— even though that older classmate was mostly invisible to me.

The way through the woods isn't so far. She's traversed it barefoot, walked it drunk in platform shoes. She hears his guitar before she sees him, smells the burning apple wood from his fire, sees the reach of bougainvillea that never blooms but persists past the front column like a long, crooked finger. He's on the porch in a red vinyl chair, smoking.

don't open the blinds all at once. light should arrive hesitant, like it isn't sure you're ready to be seen. check the air. some days it tastes like metal, some days like thawing fruit. either way, swallow it. pretend it was your choice. touch the counter. the dust is a map of everywhere you've been avoiding. drag your finger through it.

on your winter mondays and your summer fridays rinse cabbage at my side brushing your arm with mine and tapping my foot with yours take over when salting it has become tedious work with me until every corner is filled with gochugaru and when chili fumes are too strong wipe my tears with the pad of your thumb when impatience tempts me to…

i watched them wilt for seven days sinking lower and lower each day like a balloon in the pit of my stomach filling with air until it bursts and even after refilling the vase over and over i could never seem to keep them alive bright colors mean the memory is still alive dull and gray colors mean i can feel it…

One of the apes digs the graves, the other lies down inside with its long arms crossed over its chest. Then they switch. There's another ape who inscribes the names on the tombstones, has a toothache, can't see so well out of its left eye. It is what is, it's a living. Beats the zoo, the circus. The trouble is so few people die anymore.

He selects a stale baguette from the bakery cart and steps into the batter's box. The nose-picking gorilla on the mound winds up windmill-style, lobs a wailing infant right over the sweet spot of the plate. It's a high blooper into deep left, easily caught. But children can be so fussy, and the left fielder rocks the child in his arms and hums the National Anthem, the only lullaby he can think of.

I lie back in the dentist's chair. "I want the canines done in silver," I mumble through a mouth stuffed with cotton balls, but the dentist fills the cavity in my left molar with what tastes like grape marmalade. When I protest, his inflatable assistant presses the gas mask down over my face. I dream of my childhood living room, the humpbacked television is filling with snow, snow is spilling off the screen, I'm buried up to neck in it.

During my time with the Gypsies I learned how to draw whisky from a camel's hump, play whist with the tarot. When the Gypsies died – all together and all in one great huff – I freed the animals and rode the lion towards the city. The constable recognized me at once, so I spit in his palm and told him a lucrative business proposition would come to him on a Tuesday.

Inside the monster I found a machine that made other monsters. It looked like a cow's udder in comic nose and glasses like the bumbling lead in a vaudeville act would wear. The udder churned and the nose sneezed and a smaller monster shot out one of the nostrils. This morning, I show you the tiny monster splayed out on the couch where it had landed in the night.

There's a clown in every class. In our case, he teaches it. Yesterday, we learned to ride a unicycle while juggling bowling balls; today, the joy buzzer gag. Later: balloon animals. "Will this be on the final," asks braces in the front row, pulling the whoopee cushion from her seat, and is belted with a cream pie. Mother asks, "How was school today," and I pull a bouquet of plastic flowers from my sleeve: she tacks them up on the refrigerator next to my A+ history report on P.

Somewhere in the city an ear canal ruptures, wax everywhere, covering the cars, the buildings, thigh-high in the streets, toddlers in swim trunks with toy shovels and bright orange pails building castles in the mess. A clown trips on stage, off go his floppy shoes. But where are his feet? His big red nose rolls to the edge of the stage – his body deflates as if someone had pulled the plug of an inner tube.

I hadn't seen my auntie in years, so when she suddenly invited me to dinner I didn't know what to expect. What I didn't expect was that she'd become a horse. I don't mean to imply that she was fat. Though she had always been a bit on the tubby side. But, aside from the floral housedress and wide-rimmed glasses, she was distinctly equine.