The day you leave for a trip on which you’ll drive treacherous mountain roads alone for hours, I rehearse losing you, absurd gesture, useless
A woman from money, from the romance of Baku on the Caspian Sea, worked in a shoe factory In Minnesota for a buck thirty-five
Heaven may have its diamonds but the loam is yours alone, ruby rhizome. Rain a cold borscht. Crimson seeping, sweet is your revenge, stigmata
1 In third grade, we dissected a cow’s eyeball. The stink of chemicals: a graduation from the pink plastic stethoscope. I slit the loose,