Poetry

We drive two hours to escape the ash. / In my friend’s new SUV with the kids / tucked into a movie in the back. . . .

The week that I arrived there was an outbreak, which put us all on edge, and I woke up with jagged breath at each night’s middle, wailing to my metal box that pinged my wails across the ocean.

How wrong I was about what makes family. One spring, / we flew south—below us, middle earth iced pale as sheet / cake. . . .

it runs, rabbit, static to / a river in more than just bend or break / a stake left grounded; static, again, / station to station and you’ve left to see….

Across the sea, a sculptor / plunges his bronze Christ / down a forgiveness / weighed heavy with barnacle, / tempts me with the mercy. . . .

Not every fish is countable. The unquantifiable / shimmers and shakes. Our mobile incompetence // woos us, taunts.

At the lowest of tides / we go walking / through the low tide / mansions, surfaced, / stairways roughed with / salt, barnacles, // the banisters salt-cured / white.

On the second day after the tsunami, a retired embalmer was asked / to work. Bodies kept arriving at the gym.