Hand, or Specimen?

Grandma, I just love your veins, touching one protruding on my left hand, watching it sully from side to side. Grandma, your hands are like specimens, my own interpretation. Veins reminiscent of invertebrates in the Natural History Museum— earthworms, centipedes, those that squirm and seek shelter. If a museum object: Left hand, mature female homo sapiens, Caucasus, sepia-colored… Continue reading Hand, or Specimen?

Before I Was Real at the DMV

Was I ever real enough to see a hummingbird hover outside my room certain that it was my mother again enough of a presence for baby lizards to leap from the sidewalk like exclamations startled by the shadow of me to gape at a fallen sycamore leaf big as Goliath’s Philistine hand with all five fingers curled in a… Continue reading Before I Was Real at the DMV

In a Ring of Redwoods Is

Patience, in peaceful protest against the meanness of time, and with the ground that cringes underneath their roots, the rumble and creak of a weary world. Patient with the roar of civilization they swallow to save us from ourselves, and once absorbed it is muffled, hushed, and then recycled as wise old growth. Patient with… Continue reading In a Ring of Redwoods Is

Requiem for Australia

And from the darkness, curled up on a chair the girl heard a gunshot from the screen. The mother deer would never more be seen and the girl's youth blew past her like cold air. She cried and gripped tight her sister's arm and gradually her stinging tears would fade, but innocence had also blown… Continue reading Requiem for Australia