If the world smells like rain in the morning
and it does not rain.
Nothing latches on to almost everything.

In the morning, the birds settle like soft taps
of erasers on blackboards.
The chalk breaks and skreaks.

Maclura pomifera, a tree species native to the southern Mississippi valley

one Osage bow was worth
a horse & blanket in trade

it has convoluted grapefruit-sized fruit
on the female trees

formidable thorns on young shoots
yellow-colored bark

its lush foliage
was sheared effectively into impenetrable hedges

the invention of barbed wire
soon made Osage orange hedges less desirable

Darling, the marvels of Peru
drift on the water, none whole.
They bloom at dusk. Voices
carry across the lake.
Why not spirit?
Monarch visits daily.
Nearly fifty crows.
Nearly four o’clock.

Once inside, I dress my mother’s
eyes from scratch—school it with

the salt of the oxen waves that un-map the
skin of the sea humming against their weight.

Meanwhile, the young tulip tree that she grew
in the backyard softens into the shape of darkness.

Outside, I hear the voice of a man who slips the
bodies of his two buried children through the fog

after his wife finishes counting their ribs, questioning their
bruises that held sufficient grace to borrow another year.

Somewhere, a hare crawls on all fours
and prepares its throat for a capable panic.

Soon, soon, the house grows old. One by one,
the calm leaves turn sleepless in our hands.

The abandoned bowling alley has
one hundred and eight lanes. Unpeopled,

somewhere in the mountains, a bell
rings out the number of human vanities.

In the future we all float

In the Alaskan smoke,

I can claim to be a mercury-smith

With a hammer and fog under my coat

I stretch silver in webs underground,

Listening devices

Believe me

The river Nesia

Drips its vibrato along the milky powerline

“I try not to think about dead things and plumbing.” —Maria, Play It As It Lays.

After she hung up she packed one bag and drove to the desert.
Where’ve you been, he said.
He twisted a silver medallion on his chest so that it flashed in the sun.
Nowhere.

She was standing in the sun by the window, brushing her hair.
I need help, she said. I need help bad.

She slept and did not dream.

He looked untouched and she did not.
They mentioned everything but one thing…
She closed her eyes and concentrated on a prayer she had learned as a child.
She would do what he wanted.
She would tell him she could not wait.

The floor of the bedroom where it happened was covered with newspapers.
She had a sense the dream had ended and she had slept on.
She knew a lot of things about disaster.
He adjusted the dial but the sound remained level.
The table was a doctor’s table but not fitted with stirrups:
In a way she was relieved.

She put her bare feet on the dashboard and pressed her face
against her knees.

The late sun glazed the Pacific.
The wind burned on her face.
There would be plumbing anywhere she went.

To stand in the middle of winter and speak of summer,
your mouth fragile & green.

Every devotion is a twisted rope with two ends.
Think of a burial. How close that word is to boy.

Think of the feverdream as a harvest, the room
spinning even and low as a record.

Or that time you saw two bull moose
antlerlocked in a clearing, snow just starting to fall.

Every aggression is instinctual. Picture the pockets
in your body. How much time you wasted

imagining sons with boneweak men. Last
night you dreamt that your mother was dead

and you inherited her house. All of that softened
glass suddenly yours.

Night is a
violence of signs
in which you

made me whole:
soft earth beckoned
and I stayed.

I am filled
and the leaves
need to spiral.