Segullah Journal

-for Ellen and Jim You know that old T-shirt of yours, puckered at the neck, holes worn of bleach and laundering, letters faded, shape stretched? That shirt that gets in the way when I fold clothes into stacks, That shirt I object to should you wash our car in it– (better you wash a car [...]

I would basket the fruit for you, from hidden houses behind leaves and far boughs. High on a tripod ladder, I reach, and catalogue the fruit with ants and roots and the mountain behind, note the girth of the trunk and the aguapunctual movement of water. You drift like clouds, and boughs that bend under [...]

pressed for the sleeping and eating, care of the young and the sleeping and eating, duties of shelter, to keep it clean and warm and lit and locked and live, and all the wordless aspects of errands and urgencies, without details, lacking words, and the sleeping and eating and no time. no time to hold [...]

Have a cup of tea, warm, passing from my hands to yours. Chamomile for peace, the books says. It’s the way yellow flowers gather the sun. You can wash your hair in it too. A cap of sunlight over your head. But this time, just drink. Here’s a cup, An afternoon in a sunny field [...]

birds of intersecting angles, folded triangles, suited to the precision of paper and taking off. here is the simplest bird amenable to the smudgy folds of a child. we mirror make two as i tell her a story. we’ll put on crayon eyes completely anthropomorphic. the only flying is my heart with a prayer in [...]

we all hate to be alone, oh my child. i feel your heart knock against my hand, your shrieks to my shushes, i am here, yours, so sleep in your little bed. you may let go of the world, it is here, it is yours, still, sleep awhile. we all hate to be alone, we [...]