Ordinary citizens are swept away under a broadside of raging insanity and a tidal wave of blind hatred.

Even as I waited for Tammy, the ever-helpful and annoyingly chipper cremation services representative, to return with paperwork (even in death, it turns out, there are contracts to sign) . . .

As I grew older, while I slowly spun in the wind, staring at the sky, I contemplated what life held ahead for me.

Find me where the train tracks go backward. Where the dandelion yellows mix with gravel.

Run, I told myself: Help him. My feet refused to move.

Step back in time a moment brief with me.
Back when in space we hung as gas and dust.
Set spinning fast and hot, our Sun burst free,
Light sweeping outward, strong—and we? The frust.

The only bone in your body is a solitary shoot, still unhurt, that rises to the infinite, bows to the wind on a deserted beach.

Hospice Admission

1. Immediately preceding this admission, where was the patient?

At home, in her own bed.

What You Keep

When you were little you wanted to be a movie star and told your grandma when you visited that you had to use Camay soap because that’s what movie stars used…

My favorite letter, you asked? That’s easy. It’s Y.
Because Y stands for you and youth, for yearning and yielding.

With best friends and pajama parties, Y is bubbly, it’s silly.

Womb

Welcome messages and guideposts were carved into the walls from previous entities, stowaways, and drifters.

My favorite letter, you asked? That’s easy. It’s Y.
Because Y stands for you and youth, for yearning and yielding.

With best friends and pajama parties, Y is bubbly, it’s silly.

Inside the poem: Jennifer Barber and A. Molotkov

….we can’t help but take on the concept of transience, since it undergirds everything that happens in a lifetime.

Communing with My Mother at Home Alone

I hear weary patience, but where are the sweeter sounds?

You lie in bed under the quilt from your son and his wife, and stare at the ceiling. It’s impossible to sleep while your roommate groans. You think the same thoughts every night.

ON BEING ASKED BY A MAN IN THE ALLEY BEHIND SUBWAY IF I WANNA FIGHT HIM

I say, well, I'll have to think about it. Like, I don't go to the gym as often as I should & my left hook needs some more muscle behind it. I tell him maybe. I say, it's presumable that we both have stomachs full of footlong meatball subs & should we wait about an hour before fighting?

First Flight

This time you are the bird
watching him fall.
Such curious feathers.

Funeral for a Good Friend

The pastor says we are sinners, all of us.

Shooting Pool

When those duck-tailed Harley greasers
rumbled up to the pool hall
I scratched the eight ball
and tossed my stick aside

My mother, nicknamed "Wild Mary K" by my friends, indeed went wild when she heard that a company with a history of polluting the lands, lakes, and rivers of its home bases, was about to do the same near the Shenandoah River. So "Wild Mary K" did what she did best. She rallied her friends. She talked to strangers. She got into some good trouble.