A poem about the soul’s power. — At first, it seemed the fire only burned for itself the wax dripped to the table and formed little ponds on which the shadows of that flame would dance the singular spark of something inexplicable not important really but for the singular reason that it couldn’t find another use for…

A poem in your footsteps — your mother found me pacing endlessly on an empty stretch of beach the rising tide turned the sand to mercury well, not scientifically anyway, I waited for her for you soaked to the bone in my bathing suit freezing and sad before she arrived I was just one of the manifold…

Pandemonium poem “I was birthed restless and elsewhere” — Patricia Smith, “Katrina.” They swept us away, those wakeless waves our bones caverned, bodies brittle, curved stiff where did we start when the storm began? ‘cause yeah, we existed before he merged us into his vortex, his entropy, his ultimate truth …

To be redeemed in smoke — Inspired by Linda Gregg’s “The Resurrection” Let the scrabble dictionary burn, the one that used to sit by his chair. Let the chair burn. Let burn his mother’s needlepoint — my great-grandmother’s. The photographs in black-and-white from his childhood. Let burn the upholstery of sofas bought in winter and the wedding album…

what we choose to forget — so much attention was paid to Notre Dame that summer it went up in flame I had just returned from Paris. we had just ended whatever it was we were that spring. it was never the same our love was a monument on which that city depended we forgot. we…

I love you with all my heart — Inspired by Linda Gregg’s “Elegance” all that is uncared for can hold my hand. the hurricane sand. the beached whale. this sunny day met with sudden hail tomorrow, a deer will face the headlights & the headlights will face the deer. tomorrow a redwood will fall in the forest & I will hear…

Hearing his voice, a pleasant haunting — Staring up at the vultures I am dumb with boredom Pleading with them to return him to life His voice is a cawing a clawing inside my skull My name comes from his These days the words stretch out Upon the loom as a scarf Unfurls down my chest Winter’s…