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Render the Face 

October 27, 2026
On a painting by Kay Sage   Gray, but right. The shadows move, misty, through   each structure & out of what can be  rendered by limits.   Perhaps what we need to know of this  is that for too long, the world   I’ve been lost to,  is the world of this making.   Like most, I’ve built from abandon,  from what’s been lost— ...

Deindustrial Domestic  

October 27, 2026
In the factory where my father  worked, there was for a time,  a caged parrot named Roscoe. Roscoe  was red & stood tall, perpetually peering  out toward metal & laborer—& occasionally  toward the children of the people  who had long worked there.  As children, our mother would  drive my siblings & I to the factory & we’d stand in front of Roscoe’s cage near the...

Moving Westward for Eternity

October 20, 2026
The always risingof the night, the snow-ball of time,its momentum and consequence,tumbling intothe parade of names—to value, to draw charters, laws,on the sun’s browon the land’s waistline,the sky’s all absorbing eye, the cycle foundin a grain, in a mountainin fathomless sulfur,in that fish abdomen. What remainsunmoved, what movesto inevitable of surge,desire’s urge and the atrophyinghorizon–You’re...

American Hog Sonnet 

October 20, 2026
Kinnell told us it takes touch to find our blessings, the secret between a saint and a sow.  We didn’t listen; we forgot our hands; our mouths bent around the shape of self-doubt.  We couldn’t tell you about pleasure if it walked past us singing its own promises.  But we could linger in that evening...

American Cow Sonnet 

October 20, 2026
Maryam believes archive is not a story, but an accumulation; she writes, the heart was never meant to be a single polished place.  How seamlessly she sees the bridges any history could cross.  We talk about where you choose to live and how that changes your definition of hospitality.   I have been the hand to...

O Mote Remote

October 7, 2026
The planet rocks, the boulder floats and sails, your fingers appear larger under light. I’m kidding, that telescope is covered. Why, who would know how air works without space so filterless unless tardigrades or sandwich leavings or dandruff’s your pleasure. An aubade of O’s, fill the sky with sunset so scarlet the O’Hara’s reach for...

From cartoons for a poem “The sword’s inside”

October 7, 2026
⛭  The sword’s inside. We know it’s no mere walking cane, but only after. Inside the plum or crabapple blossom, we know, but later. Inside the carp. Inside the lake and reeds. In the bottle itself. In dice. We know the sword in the coin as well as shadow. In each eye. All mouths. In...

From cartoons for a poem “It can make you grotesque”

October 7, 2026
⛭ It can make you grotesque, give you only one eye–and murderous hunger. You eat two men per day, like the story, but then are blinded in your sleep–with a lance the survivors heat in your own fire, as they must. This is the world. Whatever life you led before, shepherd and cheesemaker, astronomer and...

Gwen John's Chair

October 7, 2026
After her death, kept by her nephew, until finally woodworms consumed it—  once-pliant body of the willow it was  given back to animal need. In her painting, it’s empty, sturdied by a window, a tide  of changeling light. Summer: whatever’s left  of loneliness shepherded by distant trees. 

Homesteading 

October 7, 2026
I wanted to name the birds  in my mind a little & maybe even  call back to the owls, say who cooks  for you who cooks for you through  the open window can’t sleep a wink  so why not screech. But wouldn’t  that be retorting to nature I said  sleepy to myself & wouldn’t that be  futile if sort of hilarious & isn’t  the problem here time anyway  &...

Mouthfeel [the weight of]

October 7, 2026
the weight of this body pressed against the scale—all five-foot-eleven  trudging on a hundred & three kilogrammes of meat & moobs & muscles  missing, disappearing. casualty of late-night snacking, & the bait of redolent meals. a repeat delight  even for this coming night. like clogged rotors needing engine  oil, my gait stiffens, soured by a shapeless silhouette turgid on every...

Mouthfeel [the way bees]

October 7, 2026
the way bees  get drunk on the nectar  of flowers, for every sip fuels their form.  as oxpeckers sluice their throats with parasites from a hippo’s hide,  an agreement for a mutual benefit of life, of living.  as hens hunt for an omen in the soil to silence nattering chicks,  for every hapless worm is answered prayers of survival, not sweetness.  as if to say: fauna, don’t lash out at the...