Started telling my grandmother / I love her. Loudly, daily, over video calls with / my mother, my mother holding / the phone.

it’s 1906 / my great grandfather Sam lays tefillin / for the last time then leaves / them on the bedside table, / a loosening; the leather straps / left to dangle

This past November, I was a visitor in a house with many presences: a mouse in the ceiling, ladybug colonies in the doorframe, accumulations and whispers in the hollow of the wall.

If the bath is a womb, the shower is a river, a rain. Distance between droplets makes a better clean, not deep, but a clearing.

In December, Karen and her family left the murky skies of Philadelphia behind and touched down at LAX on a breathtakingly warm and sunny day.

First I wake the body / to unring a bell— / as the proctor rolls up I slam down right on the tit / of the sexy mermaid we sculpted / in the sand pit.

In our youth, glaciers winged free to the highway.

Are / sleep nets / sparse / dense / or selfish / in their / weaves?

Endings begin with a rumbling: / clap of thunder at the top / of the finale, creak and release / of the bus as it rises from its bow, / first vibrations of the tornado / siren.

Empty basilica, wood slat / walls, white Jesus expressionless. / Blue eyes and blue eyes and blue / eyes and more inaccuracies / in the courtyard.

There’s a legacy of stuff passed through my family, especially on my father’s side.

The hands of the clock strangle my neck. Each hour, a rueful sigh.

say: here     here: hear     still: hours     bud until split     stretches: a body / out

I had thought I was alone. A familiar scent of bleach and black coffee hung suspended in the warm air of my childhood kitchen.

Vignettes of/with the Russian Dictionary of Imperial and Soviet Prison Slang