Bodies Under Siege in American Art
A finger so tender the diminishing coneflower’s center shocks a needle
up through reaching skin
I pull down my black dress & feed my child.
Outside the window, other women stare soberly, unchosen. I haven’t just given a person one hundred dollars. I’ve given hundreds of people nothing.
And when the rains came like lean wolves
we were ready.
Sister Angela is wearing the softest robe I have ever touched. Her hearing aids are out and her dentures crunch as they settle. She is beaming at me from the dark, her face soft from sleep, her small body laundry-scented.
The white slap of the moon after hail gone throughivy to silver April’s first green blades: There I listened
Cézanne doesn’t paint what he sees.His apples are orange.
A Plague Journey
I am more than the world you asked me to be—
