“One little chicken shouldn’t cause/this much grief, Gary/says. There is no small grief,/I tell him, for all are/interconnected. One touch/sends tremors through our core/like the fly in the web/that wakes the spider…

“. . . and we float above the tallest of bone structures/ our heads tilt against the ceiling/ as we drink from the mouth of a whale/the last sliver of air/and I hum/and…

“You stoop to lay your/hand on exposed roots of the cherry tree you planted/ten years ago.  I feel your touch on some part of me/called nothing in this particular moment, called/emptiness by some…

“i wear a wedding dress/woven of queen anne’s lace/& wisteria. i slip a garter/of lichen off my thigh./i do not recognize, at first,/the effigy of desire:/burnt moss for hair,/putrid/bog breath./not every incandescence is…

“As she sips her cold beer, I my Irish,/ sweet Keats lies asleep peacefully nearby/ on a favorite tartan-covered chair,/oblivious of coronavirus./In previous incarnations, this cat/likely lived through countless outbreaks of these,/if not…

“When/Gullah/Geechee folk/meet at the sto’/they speak about how/to cook stone ground grits right./That 2:1 ratio./Instant is like the biblical/abomination. That ratio/reveals itself in refined spaces too/like/cheer squads . . . .”— Yvettte Murray…

“For once we’ll write a poem again to wrens to dales to does/to all the things that cannot read a page but read the loam,/the air flush inside their nares, the undulating atoms…

“We can eat contraband creek shrimp and Vicodin,/drink oysters steeped in white lightning./I can show you houses in glory and in decay,/show you pelicans above and dolphins below/our seven black rivers that flash/their…

“For such gifts, love (forgiving/their cost, and your digs at performers’ egos, and in hommage/to whatever shakes you wakeful at four a.m./on a May morning to gather a birdsong barrage)/I will bend my…

  “Maybe he believed that seeing well/adds being to our brief/reservoir, our breviary./Not that sight is prayer, or memory/faith. Maybe attention is:/a long look at silver maple leaves’ downy/undersides, blue silver like snow-fox,/but…