Poems

Strings cross the lyre,

Our flag rustles,

When she is three, she makes her choice: a skeleton
for a father.

Make her thoughts a pencil sketch
empty of all but line,

You share tonight the planet’s oldest grief,
one set in motion hard upon the stars.

I’ve brought you sadness
near the bone, trained to work
for nothing

Nothing so wrong
with sitting still
to watch, some days,

There’s reassurance in recounting the hours
strung one to another like a paper chain

Sister, listen.
Zeus swallowed his first wife.

Mine are named Emmet, Jessie, and Virginia,
bare-chested children
with a gaze like gall.