As Mourning Doves Persist

Chamomile, tea abate this pang on Christmas ... fragile spoon  a mother in the quicksand belch of carols  ... kisses  through hair ... She said this would make a prayer wall ... clefts where mud  has  washed away

who tends to the old man downstairs, wakes the incontinent dog for a walk; moves one dusty memory to another table, making room for her art. Realize her hula hoop of a dream, moving from anxious waist to ready neck and then back down again. Adapt. Adept. A moving target. Wedded to starving, she laughs at last when we're together  but in the solace of her car is likely to pound glass with the back of her hand, chewing at wrist restraints, planning escape. Her medium is pure black and white against sky; playful juice tumblers for others. No more April fool. Finally she has snuck back into the busy market of farmers, no longer lonely, scouring for basil, tomatoes, and a fist of dahlias big as her bursting thoughts and fragile  as her kiln-fired heart which  when tapped prematurely may tumble  into a ship of splinters, a sturdy raft with bright, rippling pirate's flag. All those necessary trees hitched together. She will be disguised as Ms. Tom Sawyer....

In Antonito, Colorado, stands a two-story beer can castle visible for blocks as you take Main Street, mud and tin, discards of a lapsed warrior who stacks glass and nails hubcaps, banging out his gratitude for survival in battle. We’re told that the maker resides in an adjacent trailer, drinks tea with deities, having sworn off tobacco scored in Binh Ba, Vietnam, and the binge alcohol of potential death. He saws the cans in half and drags them flattened to the backyard, flipped inside out, sculpts icing of sparkling shingles Stark red evil eye swings at the front gate, burning reminder, and our Lady of Guadalupe, mother of God, stands coy in a small birdcage. She is safe here with her head bowed, one innocent outstretched hand under these eerie winter windows curtains torn to expose only black and the menagerie of glass as insulation. These monumental spires resemble grain silos on the horizon, or nose cone capsules separated from their...