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October 7, 2026
Block Poem Each time they asked what beauty was, my answer changed. Blood on an enemy planet. Stolen marble behind hushed glass. The man who wrote the explanatory copy posted on the museum wall. My young bones shooting up like artillery weeds. A weird seed in the side yard that revealed itself an aster. Black...

Alexithymia

October 6, 2026
I know these dents on the groundunder that tree where we used to sit, baking in the afternoon light. Our cheeks pinkedlike the strawberry ice cream we ate in summer’s scorching, still laughing togetherabout how my dad is dead, except now her mom is too. At the noises we made, the memories of our parentsdrinking...

Sweetness 

October 6, 2026
Nothing stays forever not in this world like granddaddy’s blue tractor parked by his crooked fence  spider webs sprawling corners of my home windows  or the goldfinch perched on a decomposing pine branch beside my house—  even the dead bow to worship worms and roly-polies. By now, the bird could be miles away.  It has taken me so long to find the right words for granddaddy’s tractor humming wherever tractors go when they’ve stopped whispering I...

Some Melodious Plot iii. Field Notes from the Deep Web

October 6, 2026
The United States government murdered over 12 billion birds over the course of 1959 threw 2001. As they killed off the real birds they replaced thim with surveillance drone replicas. Indistinguishable from a biological bird. There are now no real birds left.   –Official Birds Aren’t Real Informational Van Bumper Sticker  iii. Field Notes from the Deep Web  Did...

Branches Blown into the Creek’s Black Water

October 6, 2026
Streaming at all hours,the same fierceattention, the wind’sbright task, the leaves’ riotous leaps and leapssoldiering on.Not the flotsamof parting, but a roilingsteeped in desire,the common sensethat binds starling to crow. So many ways to nestleinto the surface,to surrender to the season,to be unbroken. And things unhumanthat could becomesecond nature.Second nature.

Some Melodious Plot vi. Plato's Birdcage

October 6, 2026
The United States government murdered over 12 billion birds over the course of 1959 threw 2001. As they killed off the real birds they replaced thim with surveillance drone replicas. Indistinguishable from a biological bird. There are now no real birds left.   –Official Birds Aren’t Real Informational Van Bumper Sticker  vi. Plato’s Birdcage   And, after all this...

Mouthfeel [today we eat]

October 1, 2026
today, we eat a billion-dollar leather industry in our sweet soups, stews, sides as pomo, cowhide. tomorrow, civets and deer, serpents and hares disappear from our forests into our mouths; as our throats classify them bushmeat. overmorrow, crickets will become the appetisers that water the desert of our hunger. we eat every thing. we eat every moving thing. our mouths are always looking for something to hold: a morsel here, hope there—a temporary infrastructure in the quarry of our stomachs.               everything in the world exists to end...

Dead Sweeties

October 1, 2026
Postcards just as inarticulate as the boy behind the wheel, sheets of airmail tissue (cheaper!) penned close with detail; a corsage with a blunt note: each missive begged mate me, an imperative I often obeyed, curious, unafraid, yet confused by the rough retreat, post-charm, post helter-skelter. A boxful of evidence however crude – even a...

Larson’s Pond 

October 1, 2026
(For Tom)    Sitting beside the water after hiking,  it’s easy to let go, leg muscles tired  from doing the work they love, carrying me  up and down the steep ridges of the Driftless.  Slouched on a wooden bench on the small,  floating dock, I surrender to ripple and drift,  dragonflies skimming the water in a blur  of blue, the chitin of their...

Autumnal

September 30, 2026
So here we go again with the fundamentally unjust Octoberness of August  with the trees going so schizoid so early & commencing, thus,   to really fuck with my need for more time to think whippoorwill & loon  & even write that rhythm down like sound can murder death   when really what this is is the 21st century & what we need is a...

Might the Student Know More? [37] 

September 30, 2026
Funny, not enough research on the present moment yet,  all of us are experts.   The construction worker holding the dialectical slow/stop sign backwards  yelled at me for moving forward, for my safety. Or maybe his? He just wanted me to be yelled at,   not die! (Getting fired is expensive.) We had nothing else in common. A dumbass teacher   only teaches his students to...

Shoal

September 30, 2026
Then for a moment the light was the same—light of one particular hour of girlhood, one morning findable twice. Shoal, perhaps related to the Old English for skeleton: a sandbar that breaks the surface of water, causes a depth to ease. The ocean floor rises in a place singular, thinned, and we are permitted to see. When I learned the beautiful poet had died, I thought now she’ll never drink tea again. Which seemed the worst thing, though of course it wasn’t. I think I was trying to...