Poetry

When he traveled, he did so without mercy, in a body that was not a body but canvas painted with his handprints.

I imagined us a nation
because our house
was our corner of the world.

Picture if you will Tony Hoagland
and me, he in his Donkey Gospel
hat and me wearing my Hustle ring,
in his car patched with silver duct
tape and sagging passenger mirrors
discussing vehicles as metaphors

You don’t dress your mouth
in my blouse. My body crinkled

There is, in a nearby field, a retired show horse living out
whatever days it can win, a white horse speckled with brown
flecks. Its limp mane welcomes your hand. On its face,

I’m tired of being a woman. I walk
into grocery stores and laundromats wet
with the cracked face of a maidenhead
lurching across the Atlantic.

I’m fourteen and the smell of singed hair
circles me like the halo of a pre-Renaissance
Madonna. Loss already on my face.
A summer crush holds out his fingers

On my way to the fertility clinic,

                                  I pass five dead animals.

First a raccoon with all four paws to the sky
               like he’s going to catch whatever bullshit load falls on him next.

Where is the drug to drug this feeling out of me, the drug 
to drug away the fear of drugs and what they steal from me 

I’m driving down to Tennessee, but before I get there, I stop at the Kentucky state line to fuel up and pee. The dog’s in the car and the weather’s fine. As I pump the gas a man in his black Ford F150 yells out his window about my body. I...