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
Before North took a seasonal job / fishing for kings in Alaska / I’d never admitted to myself / that he was my only friend.
Inasmuch as our faces / bear resemblance, / now, to what // I imagine of them
Able only to recall / his parting footsteps—the chipping away at / a tree one fells at last
Through the window, what light gives / new meaning in the day.
