We talked death with burned-up intensity, both of us drawn to it like moths to an electric light bulb. Sucking on it!

Women tell time by the body. They are like clocks. They are always fastened to the earth, listening for its small animal noises.

Craft is a trick you make up to let you write the poem.

The Witch's Life" When I was a child there was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch. All day she peered from her second story window from behind the wrinkled curtains and sometimes she would open the window and yell: Get out of my life! She had hair like kelp and a voice like a boulder. I think of her sometimes now and wonder if I am becoming her.

The little girl skipped by under the wrinkled oak leaves and held fast to a replica of herself.

And if I tried to give you something else, something outside myself, you would not know that the worst of anyone can be, finally, an accident of hope

I tell you what you’ll never really know: all the medical hypothesis that explained my brain will never be as true as these struck leaves letting go.