Penelope Considers a New Do (audio only)
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The Long Deployment
For weeks, I breathe his body in the sheet and pillow. I lift a blanket to my face. There’s bitter incense paired with something sweet, like sandalwood left sitting in the heat or cardamom rubbed on a piece of lace. For weeks, I breathe his body. In the sheet I smell anise, the musk that we secrete with longing, leather and moss. I find a trace of bitter incense paired with something sweet.
2013
Much Tattooed Sailor Aboard USS New Jersey
Squint a little, and that’s my husband
in the photograph, the sailor on the left—
the one wearing a rose composed of ink
and the Little Bo Peep who stands
before a tiny setting sun and the blur
on his forearm which might be a boat—
while the sailor on the right is leaning in,
his fingers touching the other man’s skin,
tracing what looks like the top of an anchor
2014
Syllabus for the Dark Ahead
Throughout this course,
we’ll study the American
landscape of our yard, coiled line
of the garden hose,
muddy furrows in the grass
awaiting our analysis,
what’s called close reading
of the ground. And somewhere
something will yip in pain
perhaps, a paw caught in a wire,
or else the furred and oily
yowling of desire.
And flickering beyond the fence,
we’ll see the slatted lives
of strangers. The light
above a neighbor’s porch
will be a test of how we tolerate
the half-illumination
2017