I think I lost the genetic lottery, / my cousin told me // in one of the last conversations / we had
My daughter learns I’m there / even when I am not. I name this trust
We understood it / to be suffering, its beak a little open.
that color is not color. The red flower, / she tells me, absorbs all light / but red, so reflects red / where she and I can see it.
Admit it. This is how you want me, slick where desired, / rough where requested.
I remember watching my mother / with the horses, the cool, fluid / way she’d guide those enormous / bodies around the long field
Who doesn’t like a bit of flash, / a pop of red / like a nosebleed
At the cabin in Snug Hollow near McSwain Branch creek, just spring, all the animals are out, and my beloved and I are lying in bed in a soft silence.
Sometimes it’s seaweed in your throat you can’t cough out / or an ink cloud expanding in your skull
