I Know Your Kind

Allegheny College, the MFA program at Columbia University, the National Poetry Series, Poets & Writers, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Wallace Stegner Fellowship program at Stanford University, and the Vermont Studio Center (especially Laurie Macfee and Ryan Walsh).

Strange thing: I watched his eyes, blind as bowls of milk,

trail the curlicue flight path of a cardinal.

People say

I’m performing grief. I say I’m keeping things alive:

tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, melons.

choked with soot

throws down its brittle halo, as I fade

for the last time

that that isn’t

what we call pain: the dogs.

Sorry to speak of love

as if you believe it’s still shaking like a mouse

in one of the corners of my chest.

That I am sorry that I love

what I am sorry for.

Know that it feels as cruel as it sounds,

that I forget everything except the one thing

I cannot.

go tremble where you first felt helpless