I scan the room for a big brother’s hoodied slouch
or the hard-faced stare of an older sister
with pouting fuchsia lips and bleached-taffy hair.
But it’s just us.
Volatile Substances
How small hairs pricked at the nape of my neck
when the phone rang. How at the cyanamide plant
the earth roared as the first blast flung
raw flesh, rag, and bone—
The Girl Who Lives Next Door
He speaks in Italian—keen, wheeling words
she tenders in echo. Each syllable dwindles
October’s losses, mesmerizes as her English cannot,
and she grins when he casts the remembered spell,
chants, plucks a quarter from behind her ear
When I Was Unable to Speak
The crust, quiet and tender, but I finally hear the breaking this
creates. So much of what happens
is routine. The raven crackles and shrieks because
it imagines a hole in the nest.
The Warning
Things are not as they should be:
the grass gone coarse
and sharp as wire
the horizon a haze of smoke
threatening to choke
our lungs in past neglect.
—Perichoresis—
by Ryan Keating A dance in medias res Our hands and feet together Cast identical shadows Of union and uniqueness In overlapping circles By common light refracted Onto the floor…
Vespers in Summer
He startles and flies—
but for a moment, a pool of warmth,
a pool of stillnesss, for a moment