Patsy
After the blizzard, my husband drives
out to the cemetery to check on his mother.
He calls it Just Driving Around to See What’s What
and neither of us talk about the winding road
Awards
Projection
What I took to be a man
cradling a woman in his arms and kissing her
turned out to be the gardener carrying
a pile of leaves he had gathered
Your Hands
Like coals they ashed me bit by bit, your hands.
The open fire thrilled me, I admit—your hands.
Diary Poems
What led her to write poetry she didn’t
show to others? She entrusted verses
to diaries with gold-edged pages, hidden
in a cedar chest.
Slut
In the parking lot of Churchill’s Garden Center, my mother
turned to me and said, I found the pills. I asked What pills?
though I knew.
Augury
I’d been bleeding for a year when we unsexed the frog.
Cold and pungent from formaldehyde, it lay with limbs
splayed and pinned to the tray.