To say blue would be too simple (excerpt)

To select a favorite stone to set in silver is to know your knuckles

and the years of cobalt and opal you have held your hands

under cool water, inside this wintery place. The songs you know
by heart, melodies of movie musicals in which the angel father

brings a star of cyan from blue heaven for his daughter
The full, blue moon, your head bobbing to jazz drum shuffle

All this aquamarine and fall blue, late snow that lands
on the azure underside of desert earth where aspens molt

and the evergreen trees are nearly navy when squinting to see
driving in again for home, from far. Tired and blue

Blue where rickety houses hang on to the edge of the earth
Secure now as seen from a deep denim galaxy, you, working blue,

Mother, and I had to leave you to return to your enchanted place
To your worn, cool hands jeweled with blue. To dry waves of juniper,

jays, and the hues of landscape as runoff spills over, blue bottles...

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Vessel

Inside I imagine puckered cups of butter cookies nested in paper that releases a sigh But instead there may be fiction within wishes never reciprocated Playbill of redundant arguments One black glove found fraying This vessel on an emptied table solo temptation is labeled with another’s name Guarded initials as if carved in melting snow A tool unsuited to the task of prying open Not yet valentine

A Matter of Travel

Solstice, 2019, for Tracy 1. And cross borders we do often without leaving our houses. Our bodies dream of gardens. Our hands flutter as feeling exits as we press hard against the solid entry door. I type the names of cities. My search reveals rivers, airfares, temperatures in July. 2. Seeking sleep, I am transported through music piped into tiny earbuds. While on an island my father has two seizures in the night. His ten children fly to one another with cautionary fright, typing. Time zones vary from each cell phone exclamation. Two sisters, you and I, raise questions that barely touch down for others but I witness you. 3. By morning we’re assured was merely fainting, and I reconsider change of plans. No emergency to rush to his quiet side. I walk no farther instead to this table for eggs, an English muffin. Arrive inside my individual conclusions. Concern that happin...

Broken Bits and Mending Tape

S acred stones roll around on the floor of my car, carried in over years of scavenging. Pocketed. Parceled. Placed on dashboard or grave. Markers of present coloring past. The sun bathes the windshield just so and the secret messages written in mud or snow show themselves for the innocent blessing that they are. I walk into this side street café with my bruised heart in a purple and black satchel and am greeted by a circle of banjo players and one free seat against the window. Chairs like we inhabited in elementary school when things were still made of wood, grafted together at the corners with metal, corners rounded and smooth. We kept our notes in desks and lockers, wrote whispers of names we adored on the plain brown wrappers around our math books. Took broken bits and mending tape, carted cassette songs of guitar players who have since died or changed their names. Like mantras, directions to the river canyon where we could picture the rough rope as magical swi...

As Mourning Doves Persist

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