30/30 Day 11: Fragment

The body is a timeshare of doubt
and overconfidence, each one
drifting in and out, leaving their
small, accumulating messes.

30/30 Day 10: Natural Phenomena

The horse inhales deeply
                        as it is saddled, and holds in
            hope that the rider will not

notice. The coyote gnaws
                        off her own front leg from
            the trap that has snared her,

counts this as a victory. I think
                        about points of entry without
            exit as my uncle flays a shad

still flopping on the gunwale,
                        this to use as bait for larger
            game. He spears a knot

of flesh around a palm-sized hook,
                        casts, waits. The horse will release
            its breath only when the rider

is mounted, toppling him from
                        his loose throne. The coyote
            will wait for the limb to die

before murdering the family cat.
                        The sturgeon which has taken
            the bait deep below is older

than I am, and in its surfacing
                        has irrevocably tangled our lines.
            The shad, half-skinned, flops

into the water and disappears.

30/30 Day 9: Navy Pier

She places a pile of ash ten
feet from the last, measuring
by footsteps toe-heel-toe-heel
as you tell me that everything
made by human hands looks
terrible under a microscope.
Constellations reveal themselves
in the poured concrete, but I don't
mention it, the woman's bicycle
(given over to the appetites of rust)
balanced with one hand as
the other, coated, ghastly, cradles
another half-cup measure mountained
like gray flour. You say that nature
presents itself as a beautiful series
of boxes within boxes, and here
the messy particulars of life and
death meet––what is contained
contains, what holds is also held.

30/30 Day 7: Thrift

Those mornings we rose to the newspaper
splayed across the living room floor, enough

red ink for a murder scene, our mother
poring over classifieds: everything

given was received, sought was found.
Here, a couch made home by wasps

last summer, a canoe portaged a county
too far, our city rivers thick and silted.

Every harvest took planning, the hand-
drawn map pointing the way from one

discarded oasis to the next and, on her
return, the living room became an orphanage

of mis-matched furniture and crooked lamps.
The house was a weakened body after a vital

transfusion––every surface new and flushed
with life, none of it recognizable as our own.

30/30 Day 6: Distance

2.

Here changes momentarily, a rail-
road, a bridge across the creek that

splits a tiny town in two, a silvered
vein of quiet in the rocky conversation

between shores. But already, here
is fields of grass shorn for the coming

heat which have hosted wars and their
children––you can almost see the bone-

meal beneath the bonemeal. Here is
not the forest, but the memory of trees,

and not the leaves, but rich earth
in their burned stead.

30/30 Day 5: Distance

1.

Listening to Radio Nowhere, looking
as you always do, at the mirror, or more
precisely, at the misshapen glass that
contains your reflection and all behind
you, surrounded by the oncoming road.

30/30 Day 4: On the Fourth

We discuss favorite words
after a smoke on the shore
of Lake Michigan, sailboats
numerous as teeth. Synopsis,
cathartic, vermillion, precipice,
vitalitous––this last one not
truly a word, but a better creation
to describe something's living,
the lush forest which walls
the beach, counterpart to the thousand
dead fingerling fish washed up
on the rocky transition between
sand and what I keep mistakenly
calling the sea.

30/30 Day 3: April/Aftermath

We shored ourselves
against the siege of winter
with all we had, blankets
worn as tissue, enough tea
to float a ship, and
when the creeping frost
finally retreated down
the oversized window
panes, everything
seemed broken or waiting
to break. Grass grows
through the garbage,
the roots of the tree outside
emerge from the laundry-
room walls, cracked and
crumbling, thin as thread.
By measures, we learn
to subside with these
reclamations, but they turn
us wild, our laughter
the heckling bark of dogs,
our smiles, the bared
teeth of some aggressor.

30/30 Day 2: Mausoleum

He was purported to say
that all the warmth had left
her body, so he built them
a warm place: old books,
dirty dishes, tarnished lantern,
her unfinished knitting draped
over an armchair, a casket
for him, too, across the way,
waiting, open. See, how quickly
the rest of us make quiet
room for grief, without ever
populating its spaces.

30/30 Day 1: Ask 1 Radio Psychic Network

The last piece of advice
threatens to topple
her swift-constructed
sureness. It's after
she has already asked
about wages, names, hours––
received all she needed
to know about being
on the edge of a break-
through, leaves prepared
to turn, big things
on the horizon and all
florid ways of saying
time inevitably takes you
elsewhere. With one
minute left, the psychic
asks about love, followed
by laughter on the line.
I feel in my head––the listener
corrects herself––my spirit,
I mean, if you can hear
the spirit in my voice,
you know I'm cringing.