May I

  blushing Body Worlds Exhibit Boston John 20:2   And then he breathed on them and s…     It’s shapes—it’s because words have shapes and because they make the jaw   muscles taut or in some degree not       (or/and then                         knot) that cause especially along the lower bone beneath the teeth to tighten like a high note in the voice- box to almost close depending on   the nature of what it is being called:                         the friction of it                         in that room when we were told he    ...

  Jocabed MFA Boston Aubade’s Consequence    “Enlightenment,” wrote one master, “is an accident, though certain efforts make you accident-prone.”                                                             Jane Hirshfield                                                 Inspiration   You look, though only once or twice in your entire lifetime, as a mother   and say I made         ...

  She Calls Them Allegories of Innocence   Maybe it’s the shapes of things that go blurry at first & in the blur, soft.   Even those angular sharp edges are folding so that at this distance they bear, being fuzzy, some resemblance to a child’s nighttime soul stuffed or woven & clutched in the dark, in a dark so dark no lights were allowed in. Something terrible happened in that dark, something that repels words themselves as though those words were plastic bullets & too wheedling, too weak, too shallow in the root, too new to penetrate or pierce. The other day I was walking with my son who wants to be my daughter & I was remarking how marvelous the new grass, its perseverance to move the weight of winter-compacted dirt, coax it out of the way (though who knows what is happening in that dark, maybe it’s not coaxing at all, but something more dire, more sinister in its life-drive) pulse by pulse every day & i...

  rock paper scissors  Proud Flesh   And see how the flesh grows back across the wound, with a great vehemence, more strong than the simple, untested surface before. There’s a name for it on horses, when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh.                                       Jane Hirshfield                                     Yesterday you read the Ocean Vuong poem in your pacific baritone  & though I don’t know how to mark your voice in a line up of voices or put you where you should stand as a complement to the soprano the alto the deepening or heightening degrees between each all I can say is you read each line without flaw without rehearsa...

  Wind-- Lake Winnipesaukee Electric Breath                         (maybe             I’ve loved this grief too well)                           Linda Gregerson                         Bleedthrough     How speaking creates her or even better her singing breathing sweeter   to the air it’s born out on all those osmosises into their own wind the syllables   to each their own float or fall how birdsong is totally breath and scent   sung out to be seen by the species the way people maybe   see the remarkable chemistries of dust in the sun.   & her color becomes th...

  My Heart Is Stretching   And Yesterday, I felt my it stretch the long way -- base to apex -- and likened it to an Arbor             vitae.   Elon-                         gated, I saw a tall thin oak and I didn’t know what I was looking at at first.   Noon, so no shadow.   Turns out they call it                         a Columnar English Oak. Or toward Linnaeus: Quercus robur Fastigita Rooted in the, if you’re facing it and the mountain’s in front of you too, the northwest corner of the community garden.   How drawn, which is to say how stretched toward or simply just growing into          ...

 Adoro te devote     detail: andromeda daniel chester french                                                                                                                                   Setting: maternity ward Mother: in labor nearing 40 hours Father: in the wings Director/Pediatrician:   Baby: boy yet             to arrive     Because the truth is we invent a life for them our children where we are a part of them right a part of their lives? where we are assigned some defining role to star to manage – the script is written the stage has its backdrop...