You used to complain how memory liked
to play games, calling me by the names
of all your grandchildren. I, too, forget––
walking past the open door, still anticipating
your curved figure on the bed. A question mark
in a faded house dress, a scattering of white hair.
Forgetting
that the ambulance never came to stop
in our driveway, blinking red and blue, blue
and red, its siren as quiet as that treacherous
vein that if I closed my eyes, I could pretend
it were another Tuesday morning––the drivewa...

You sit on the shore alone, cast away

by the boy you loved. Your eyes well up with

tears, the salt in them telling of the sea

inside you. You were never one for pools,

never one to go for a dip. Always

you preferred to dive deep, to hold your breath,

to feel with every inch of skin the risk

of drowning. Your heart pumped oceans for him.

But he would have none of it. So you find

yourself on this shore but with lungs longing

for air. From here, the surface of the sea

glitters as

Throw down your umbilical noose so I can climb right back. - Kurt Cobain



The body unseen for months after:

small, nameless, unborn, in the white light glistening

in what was your amniotic embrace. How,

they ask: a dans macabre to the heart beating

a death march�� ta-doom ta-doom ta-doom

then the fatal twirl, the descent of the umbilical

noose, the delivery from life. The stethoscope

fished for sound, hearing nothing but ocean.

Cartoon sailboats unmoored on the wall, roun

A Poem

A Poetics Essay