I do not always look when it snows. I fear it will stop and the skies will open, paper-thin and blue, and leave me uncovered and cold without reason. Unfiltered sun strikes me hard, always on my neck, tucked in the joints of my fingers. I feel aware of my age—the sun rounded to four point five billion years old. I don't care about the age of the clouds. I'm told anyway that our water could be older than our star. I can enjoy their drift into material and immaterial imagination, flushing their bodies against the windows and onto the lawn. If I could see the spots changing on the sun, maybe I wouldn't fear aging in its way.

Like No One Came

October morning, first snow drifted
across the wood-grain window sills
on eastern walls. Ice coated tree limbs,
but the sky still felt watercolor.
A picture of summer in liquid amber.

There shouldn't have been snow;
the roads still lay in black bands
on their sides, waiting instead
for simple rain. But waves beat
like a dusk in the sunlight.

Now and then the breeze whipped
my skirt back and licked me
as a lover, circles in my thighs,
the small of my back, skin raised
in heated pleas of oh God and now here.

The ocean ached in a shuffle of limb
until it was too dark to move.
Too cold for October, for Sundays.
I pulled my hands from my tangled hair
and cupped the snow. It stuck
to my wet fingers and I had to open
my hands before it melted away.

Thrust toward summer's sky
with an oh God and you're here.
Winter made a sparrow in my eye
—numbed my hands and left me
stranded by the sea next morning.

"From Rachel, I learned the fine points of stars.
From everyone, I learned, again, that everything is important."
 —Raphael Dagold

“scraping out the stinger”


Satisfaction of gathering soundless nodes

ts – ts 

White birds in the sidewalk
Names after celestial bodies also, limbs, wood, spearheads

Potential earthquakes varying in magnitude

Vi-o-let

I colored in your lips, violet
like the blooms drifting across
the wide cumulous sky.
Like fingers that can’t catch
the violet-pearlescent buttons
down your belly. Sometimes
a violent violet pressed slowly
            into your thighs.

You were violet petals
 twisted into cloud and frozen
into violet ice crystals,
melted into his gaping
violet maw. Tugged into
his unseen violet stomach
and intestines, spit back out
onto your own skin again.

When you back away, violet
nails scraping the walls, tell him
I say hello. Taste violet words
and leave violet puddles to stain
the carpet where your violet lips
were pressed and held.
The clouds are so beautiful
rolling violet overhead.
Show him how much violet
there is in his blood too.

To Myself Who Loved a God (draft 1)

If I believed that angels licked
the corners of my book pages,
maybe I’d believe in divination
as a gradient of godliness.
            But you run away
            from your own words.

I wish I could find that god
you said knows. That she is
everything turning stars.

You stare into the sun,
but you tell yourself not
to watch your cornea burn.

You could walk, incarnate. A god
barefoot on concrete, toes
guttered with rainbow water,
            or oil-slicked blood.
It will spill from skies and lips.
            I know

how you feel about the water cycle.
Precipitation on your glass dries
            your lips. Not thirsty.
You lay outside in curves of desert sand.
            There’s a freedom in forgetting 
to drink, you murmur between the slope
of your hips and the dips of your neck,
where the droplets slide and dry
            before the sun can rise.

This sting is the slice of angel’s 
wing on my cheek, and it is just 
to lay where everyone lays, 
with the sun in their eyes,
            skyward by mouth.