You hope the oats are clean. You want
the bowl to be satisfied.

I remember silence,
not the kind between gunshots
but the silence that hums when the Earth forgets your name.

living in her cheek. Every once in a while,
she’d place a seed on her tongue to sustain me.

Suddenly I’m free, through the double pane,
among—one of them, flapping, gliding, cawing:

They sprawl, heedless of the cultivated plants—

dahlias and calla lilies, scalloped-edged 

In the morning, I cross the throttling freeway by bridge.

America, you’re drunk / America, I’m tired / America, what good is a melting pot with a ladleful
of holes?

You left Earth and Crazy Horse winked at me, granny.

After Jeanann Verlee and Evelyn Berry

The ordinary pages passed us rapidly,

The raspberries are desperate
for a weeding.

Repetition masquerading as tradition without meaning.

              little pink worm          grown
too full         for Mother’s hook

The professor of Spanish literature tells me
she has been to the monastery prison in Toledo,