Rock Paper Scissors Water. water to rub rock smooth water to rust scissors shutwater to dissolve paper into nothingnessthen return it to the cannibal trees waterwaterwaterwaterwaterwaterwater water to...

Midmorning Break My mother had ten. We dartedin and out from under her wings.She smoked cigarettes and dranktea that had cooled — a sip and...

What Joan and Marie tell me After “Merci” (oil on canvas, 1992), one of Joan Mitchell’s latest works before she succumbed to cancer in October...

Marigolds The season is ripe and the seeds take rootin the caverns of my eyes.Spindling roots with secret urgency,tying knots from hidden capillaries.Soon,in a gesture...

Science 101 Like the universeI’m expanding -sadly, not nearlythe way I had hoped.Our physics teachererroneously told usobjects lose massas they approach       the speed of lightand yetas...

SURFACES Winter’s hand. Damp streets. Morning’s glareon clouded windows. March the third. Light whittles branches to brushstrokes.We are not fooled by the appearance of things. Fear in...

Winter Solstice We drive in the darkpast the open fieldsinto the neighborhood:Millions of lights on the housesin the trees—the world a-twinkle with hopewhile overhead a...

Kindly i want to diein the same way daddytakes care of tarantulas—kindly. pick me upby the leg & chuckme out the way. Sarah Karowski (she/her) is...

Street Scene Early evening heat rises frompavements, from cement and asphalt,carrying a scent slightly sour,slightly acrid—oily and tar-like. Outside the café, beyond its fenced-intables, a large...

You Ask Me About America’s Future I remember this –I was a child clutching the string of a green balloonShivering next to classmatesOn a blustery...