December Wind
Last night I dreamt I was bleeding,
two cold gushes down my thigh.
I woke up thinking, yes, winter is coming—
winter and my son.
But tonight it’s only wind
hissing something awful
and I see my grandmother
before she died, gray lips open,
the softest moan filling the room
then ending
and I can’t believe the wind is coming
from the earth I have […]
The Geese
Still, the sun contributes its honey
and a large raindrop magnifies the thin branch,
here, where I am, and where my mother,
many miles away in her kitchen,
is quietly aware of each
as they pass, over flat land and long grasses,
the lone, strong, open-branched tree,
and the rain that […]
THREAD
When a friend says her youngest just left
for a job in Manhattan,
I think of my girl on the verge
of middle school, the necessary
journey every morning.
I’ll stand at the corner
as the bus yawns open its doors
to deliver her into its chaos
of warmth and noise
where I cannot follow,
the spool between us spinning
and spinning, unrelenting
rotation, the thread
growing longer […]
POSTCARD TO MY SISTER FROM RUE DE TURENNE
It’s gray again and I feel I could do anything today; gray takes the edge off, softens the world, makes me feel invisible, invincible on this bench beneath a canopy of old poplar, eating pain au chocolat, shooing sooty pigeons from my feet. A miniature street park, […]
BELONGING
this is how the mind works: it sees colors
sometimes not registering the thought.
the indigenous poet was constantly
asked where she was from, her aztec cheekbones
suggesting an unknown. you see the other
cannot walk around just being, the other
has to check a box or the one
won’t know itself, the one’s primacy will be
challenged. this is […]
Sleepless
Twenty minutes to midnight
the frogs are still calling
and somewhere in the far distance
a woman is flinging clothes
into a suitcase. Her shoes
echo like gunshots on the tile floor.
In my sleep I am forever
counting the times my parents
have left me alone in the house,
the frenzy of my fingers reaching,
the deadbolt drawn back
with an unexpected snap.
Ann Walters lives […]
AT THE WIND TOWER, ATHENS
Finally they go in contrary directions,
east and west, each breezing
into the life of someone else.
And even then each remembers the same scenes:
the dip from snow into the hot spring,
the hotel room in the blue-olive-tree valley,
the tzatziki and wine under a string of lightbulbs,
the wedding band thrown at him in the parting.
The […]
Isabelle in Sienna
Stomping on thick short legs up cobblestones as large as your feet,
glued to my hand with gelato, you bellow the Sesame Street theme
song—Sunny day, chasing the clouds away! On my way to where the air
is sweet! Isabelle. Ah, Isabella! Bella! Bella! say the museum guards who gather
around you—young women, old men, fellow citizens […]
the way things disappear
here, there is something like humidity
descending against the lake,
bass snapping at mayflies
and a duck wings easily,
low to the surface, splashes down
with a spray of water.
the only purpose for the duck
is to make noise
over the bullfrogs. i need
another sound, a crash sound.
there are certain things
that scare me. waterfalls. black night
windows and the […]
Mango
I bought a mango
from the market
in the Strip district
where the leaves
are half on the ground
and half in the trees
and the street is potholed and almost frozen
and I cut it
like you showed me
back in our Phoenix apartment
on Camelback Avenue
not quite in half
I slipped the blade
around the tough flesh seed
then scored the halves
and turned them inside out
like […]
