The dip and pull by which forces underground draw rock, mesquite and gravel trails down make imbalance of the mountain as it leans against November light. So rough and nothing stands except by virtue of the weight it stands against, textures flow into each other and dissolve, arroyos take direction from the clouds. All a kind of sacred chaos these formations and…

Silent as a raven's shadow over aching rocks the season's heat clears every day a space where it rests until the sky can breathe. Mouse bones rest next to javelina tracks that point downslope while the deep earth listens to the surface and hears nothing but the steady drip of starlight into dust. Night, day, to the sun they're just the land…

The river folds its spine. Coins in the pulling current and tadpoles like punctuation marks in the trees, unwrap a sandwich in the fog. There are ants in the mustard, and the grass bends east today. Moss peels off in the shape of a wolf. Hear the hum of a machine engine purring. A picnic and a crow answered, so you sang.

In the heart of sweat and smoke and pink ginger slabs of flesh, I sit with you on a pleather loveseat peeling and sticky with Four Loko, slung with sweatshirts bunched like coiled snakes—I could do this all night. Glittering party hats crown the crowd, proud and crooked, sliding from slick glowing foreheads as they writhe and ripple and tuck Twisted Teas…

Raw and idle, the shiny metal racks of shit I don't need not enough to derail the swirling top in my head, I drive the ten- minute trip I never take to the deserted park to watch the past selves of an almost love that I don't think about flit between my memories and lazy tumbling leaves. The first, us hiding from a cop car's searchlight…

My safe space is a starship of slate suspended between canopies of green or blue depending on if I lie belly up or down, a pirate ship's plank on the fringes of reality just out of sight of my childhood house on the hill. In it, I'm 10 years old hiding from expectation that will drag me down if I'm not careful,

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.