Poetry

Sunburst bloom / marble leaf / petal frill—a flower of many flowers / I couldn’t name / from our garden / grown of many gardens / my grandmother foraged.

Warmer water, the sun to shut its eye / like a daisy, the clouds to fall / down, petals. A softer morning. / I never get that body-feel. . . .

ignoring possibilities. like. the memory of water. // like. how this glass of water was once in the stomach / of the very last woolly mammoth. . . .

Feeling worshipful of grass today. / Feeling like I ought to take a blade / or two into my mouth and chew.

Because in her neck of Florida, she wasn’t raised / on tornado drills or water moccasins / but instead on hurricane precaution / and how to kill coral snakes.

I’ve traded lessons for my kitchen mixer gears / to be packed with new grease. / Since then, decades of birthday cakes. / Traded lessons for porch steps made wrong, / the all-wood support after one year / melting to grass. Trading time / for music. . . .

Get the dough, roll it out paper thin, one tablespoon of filling—a little more—yes, like that. Now, marry the edges. She is teaching me how to make dumplings.

The river in pieces—pool, riffle, run— / holds thousands inside itself, still undone, / motion captured.