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I’m nearly eighteen, between ships, moping 
on the mess deck of Coast Guard Base 
Seattle. It’s Saturday night & I’m broke

How could they know,
how could anyone know
you were not formed by origins,

In early June, President Obama declared the wave of unaccompanied minors crossing illegally into the US—a number expected to reach 90,000 this year—an “urgent humanitarian situation.” While FEMA now coordinates their basic care, the federal...

By now she knows that just because it’s thin
doesn’t mean it won’t hurt, that green is better 
than dead & dried. She needs to choose 

My love, the fox is in the yard.
The snow will bear his print a while,
then melt and go, but we who saw

Not long after I fell in love with my wife, I fell in love with her father. I can’t say for sure if I loved him until after she and I were married, but I liked him from that very first night.

I say to the lily asphodel,
onionweed—

The ghost of the nineteenth century
still stalks the eaves 
of the hurricane house, its clapboard sheaves

It seemed that every moment winter would touch its own back. The year’s last snow melted in the daytime, budded again overnight from sidewalks and car hoods, consuming into March and then into April days the deep patience of the most...