dedicated to a cowgirl… Torn ticket to a rodeo, stained upside-down wooden raspberry basket, teal, brocaded pincushion the size of a child’s hand, dried bee balm bouquet. Well-worn lasso, shredded and dusty, rusted Campbell’s soup can brimming with marbles, baby bootie scuffed, eyelets misplaced. A black silk stocking, lace on its ankle, draped over rosewood branches crossed to the…

  All over this blue earth, life calls to life, dog to man, girl to an arum lily. Here, dear (insert your name),  we have soup on the stove, steadily simmering but likely to fail again, blown-out lentils, too much sea salt.  I open a book, examine a myth of survival, Celtic spirals, new moons. Blood soaks the stories— dancing…

  I had never seen a bird flatten itself until I spied a sparrow slip through a slit in the eave of Aunt Ginger’s roof.  It wore a black mask around its eyes, like people do around their fear-of-COVID faces, its feathers beautiful shades of black, gray, and green.  I wonder what it would be like to gracefully flatten. I…

beginning at the bottom of stairs to a bridge next to the Santa Fe trainyard great grandfather                                 never made it home that pay day stolen wallet stolen patriarch                                a…