I spend the forty-five minutes warming up, front-kicking & later getting my back straightened by sabumnim on the hard-wood, eyes

I’ve developed an obsession with unabridged, rambling, disordered lists:

He sits cross-legged in the slant- light that cleaves a plane in the cave floor, a line that recedes with the sun

Round and brown, he hops amid the spikey chaos of salmon berry, tail upright, body shaking with what one ornithologist called

“Not even skin that sparkles should be shown, You Lilith.  You lady of the night, dancing like no one can see you.  Who do you think you are?”

And we two are caught once again between the thing and its reflection.

Chinook, the Snow Eater, drools.                Electric lavender shimmers                down its scaley silver cheeks.

But. The greatest poem ever written,  also must be a war poem,

She was a fossil with no story to tell, no story of her own: yet contained in that dormant pulse were the stories of all...

Grateful for any help, I wept. My ex-sister-in-law. My friend. I had screamed Shame on you. My enemy holding my laundry.

I should say no more dancing on the outside since shuffling shame-faced off the stage classmates snickering But sister of spring’s first daffodils

My mother’s kitchen counters are forever scented by lemons she juiced

it’s because i have time now, in these stolen hours in which tree shadows stretch across the windows and outside, and the air is just starting to drape itself in cold and to exhale its fog into the golden streetlamp glow.

All vessels have names, even a container ship whose utilitarian appearance does not elicit poetry. Ever Given. Blood oranges, mahogany, lemons,

There used to be a snag. It was in the chest and like a ponytail caught

You fattened the pigs in your stye with acorns and beech mast, And with a wave of your wand, you transformed them into men.

question mark-comma-hyphen marks punctuated by division upon division                         a leaving-behind

Lo! Were I a woman bottled and kept, written of as battles bloodied and blessed.

You asked me how to kill An ant colony I told you to press firmly on each speck Until you thought they were no longer breathing,

The jungle has reclaimed the camp, a bed of daisies growing now where the pavilion was. The oil drum stands rusting, its remembrance burnt away.

Now, still, I’m sitting in the way-back, where I can flick my ashes on the floor and exhale freely.