Last night in my dream you smiled in a way that meant more than friendship, so I am checking if that’s what you mean.

“I used to hang out just outside           the fence of Pearson International,
on weekends with friends,         and bring binoculars. It became         a bad hobby
immediately after 9–11.”         Sujoy summed up, “You know how I look,”

Juarez tethers me like a balero
with a bridge instead of string. I tread

The year I spent a month in Denver visiting my daughter in the eating disorder hospital

the closest companions were the geese who flocked the concrete islands between the too-wide roads.

Temptation: I find sandals for me
when looking for gifts.

Confusion: I buy two dresses for me
when shopping for canning jars.

A woman could forget herself,
staring at pomegranate in the produce section.
Juicy red arils, peddled in see-through cups.
It’s involuntary. The mouth makes room

The rattler your husband impaled by bringing
down his shovel, the body split in two,
those twitching parts. Frost killed the butterfly

If anything
must fall
on us, let it

Late sun longing through the knuckles of the blackthorns

by the pond; a languorous spark. The copper heads of ferns

some animal concatenations were more probable than others      as intelligent as any echo
mechanism my accelerometer at odds with my thought processes the problem of hard

For Matthew

Wearing-in mourning’s lackluster suit, I took
a walk: heather, like toffee-brittle Christmas

trees, the copper edge of curling gorse
illuminating the way. You should’ve been here

For I,

I thought of you and bullets and the husk of ruin we are feeding

we know what is true,
Christ did not destroy the stone but rolled it.
turned over on a Sunday, i met a boy’s back
beginning an early morning beg: claw at me here.

We’d decided we didn’t need
the new guy before he arrived.
But he was a good worker,
good enough for some of us
to reconsider letting him go.

For M,

We could talk about the baby humpback who washed ashore with a belly of trash
and the net used for catching thousands of fish. How children

Go lightly. The way pain enters each day.

Light the candle of flowers that blooms
half-desiccated on the roadside.

if aurora borealises are any indication the extraterrestrials are at peace and the
definition of life is accordingly revised

You tell me I’ve given you something impossible. You
shake your head to the rhythm of my voice pealing you
are safe, safe;

It’s this way: after doing several loads of laundry,
or dusting every inch of slight surface in a home’s several rooms,