Before that, the father had been away. It was a time that many fathers were away.

The bracelet tells someone where she is, honey. But it doesn’t tell you why.

"Poetry," "Cleaning the House," and "Leaving Again"

They bang their silverware and take turns slamming the toilet seat. They drag their garbage bins too late to the curb and leave them abused by stark weathers all week. Shaker knows there is an awkward progenitor situation.

"Friendship & Other Unknowable Places" and "Diagnosis at the Walk-in Clinic"

I have coffee in my cup. I could toss the hot liquid on her and rush through the revolving door to my appointment, make her the slug.

Dixie leaned against the door, feeling the blood rush to one side before pounding it against the wood.

"Train People" and "Leaving Philadelphia"

The porn gets boring. The plants start to die. I call up the daycare and ask for a job that they will not give back to me. He doesn’t come again.

I’d scratch them by stretching out my fingers wide like cheerleading jazz hands and rub them up and down aggressively along our itchy wall to wall carpeted floors.

Being Jack’s a guy, he’s also tasked with the act of pulling my ass apart when needed so the Radiation Oncologist, Dr. Katz, a short petite woman of prissy demeanor who does her ass work in civilian clothes, even while wearing heels and a tiny purse strapped across her midsection, can insert her finger.

Four days after the initial shit, another pile of human shit was found, this time by the foreman himself, who was checking the inventory of an item located in an ill-lit and rarely visited corner of the warehouse. He immediately called a meeting.

I want to deny him but he’s playin’ it natural and attentive.  He’s good but I ain’t sure if he knows he’s good or if he’s just as polite as he’s coming off.

"First Letter to David" and "On Wanting to Be Loved"

She looked better and better to herself in his bathroom mirror as she washed up and got all ready to spend the night with him in his warm bed. 

I put a stone at each corner of the paper to hold it still beneath the fan in our bedroom. The instructions were simple.

A furniture delivery arrives, as my mother warned me upon leaving for the store that it might, and two nieces who have hidden themselves in a cabinet come out at the sound of the doorbell to ogle the brightly-colored truck in the driveway.

All the Meg Johnsons
would like to kill me

Sitting still can be tough on a body, just as the shifting earth, and plunging and thawing temperatures can be hard on a pipe.

Jeanette has gotten many notes in bars before. Many men have spoken to her too. 

The world does not write enough odes
to in-betweenness—the way you can be
together / feel apart / apart / feel together.
In a room of dozens, in a city of millions,
the mashing of MacBook keys

My sister called me the morning after that dream to tell me that the family cat was dying. It was the last cat that was still alive from the time I had lived with my parents.

Previously on... Episode 1: "The Landing"

Yoda had nothing with him other than the clothes on his back and the debris inside of the pod. There was no need for anything else. He had left his

I’m in conversation with Helen Dudley about “Reed-Song” 
her poem published in Poetry, 1915.

All day Iphigenia 
so far from the man I came to see.
Haven’t we tired of famous men? Shouldn’t I 
have my shoulders back, chin straight—I was given graces
that distract from the tissues in my