It ends because the beginning won't jumpstart
again: red smudge of a mouth, lipstick everywhere
the afterthought a comet leaves on its way
out. What makes this moment unfold like a fine
...
I lied when Pops asked, but I'll admit it now. I did touch the blue egg to see if, somehow,
it felt as much like the sky as it looked. The egg: speckled in its twiggy nest, eye level to
8-year-olds, perfect & off-limits like the Baoding balls on Pops' desk. We tried to find
its mom, but the finches scattered when we came near. One twittered the alarm from a
...
That was the week
it didn't stop snowing.
That was the week
five-fingered trees fell
...
In nyc, we stalked fishes
in filets of sounds: delivery
engines & ashy doors
...
This sunlight on snow.
This decrescendo
of covered stumps & brush —
stop for it.
...
blacks painted onto bricks & split vinyl on the East Side,
jaws as tight as window locks with the curtains drawn
& behind that diligent fabric: blacks already tucked
into homemade forts—folding chairs, wobbly backbones
...
A Schwinn-ride away: Eagledale Plaza. Shopping strip of busted
walkways, crooked parking spaces nicked like the lines
on the sides of somebody's mom-barbered head. Anchored
by the Piccadilly disco, where a shootout was guaranteed every
...
The first space shuttle launch got delayed until
Sunday, so we had to watch the shuttle's return
to Earth in class instead—PS113's paunchy black
& white rolled in, the antennae on top adjusted
...
after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
In the wobbly pirouette between song
& dust, dog-nosed living room windows
& a purple couch that should have been curbed
...
—Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, 2016
1.
Just off of Highway 12, Sandburg's signature
of time & eternity: the muggy marshes
...