mariposa

blood in the back of the throat taking the long way home isn’t that just how the thing goes slamming brakes for a swallowtail butterfly yellow wings beckoning for a better past losing, inevitably, scraping knees and knuckles against pavement boiling with sunshine, rays and beams never meant to have holding a book too closely […]

Sunday, 4am

Subcutaneous fat Pavement More than road rash Maybe it’s easier to recite insect orders Neuroptera, Megaloptera, Mecoptera Than think about all the moths flying Into the glare of emergency lights Red white red white red white Subcutaneous fat, blood spattered on pavement Orthopera, Hemiptera, Diptera The horse’s corpse two miles up the highway Unrelated, but,  […]

bold jumpers

This is how it went: the pilgrims, with their beige exoskeletons, six legs, antennae they travelled, they followed my misery, mistaking it for promised land, a place where they could be free and I learned the form of poetry in the exoskeleton, six legs, hourglass waist of a wasp on the windowsill I learned to […]

Prose Poem No. 19

In the mornings, on the weekdays, I sit on the sofa and watch the bluejays. Their color doesn’t blend well with dirt, rock, and brush—but at least for the robin, its color does. I hear the birds more often than I see them, see them more often than I know them: which is the one […]

foliage

For my siblings Find someone who makes you laugh so hard, your nose starts bleeding. Someone who’ll press a cold washcloth to your nose to make that bleeding stop (but not necessarily the laughter). Someone who buys you flowers when your sister’s cat dies, and someone who drives you and your cat to the pet […]