The state is ill; therefore, I am ill. / .... I am learning the difference between urgency / and importance.

a petrified man sliding backwards, towards us in his useless van—the army jeeps crawling towards refugee camps abandoned in the storm. We're not here to witness them.

There are days, says the child, / when God is not even God, when / the moon is also not the moon.

They had already sat down on the bed. Then the man remembered the back door was still open.

There was a picture in the paper, front / page, as if this news was the end of cruelty.

I want to ask her / about the long veils of widows. / She’ll just shake her head.

My daughter marches through the forest. She can’t do it herself, so / she uses my legs, my eyes and my fear.

Beyond the all-night diner’s pulse of crows, / rain pushes an empty swing set in song.

The manure did not / have a bad smell he insisted, / context was everything