Three Poems + An Introduction

Dickinson said, “You cannot fold a flood.” These poems present the expense of trying. It is scary when the body won’t do what you want it to. The result, many times, is an isolating silence.

Distance running, I find, is opposite of Dickinson’s folding. If I run long enough, a problem might come to the surface for long enough for me to figure it out. Most times, though, I run to remind myself what my body can do today— each breath and foot forward— is enough.

Maternal Theory

Following each low-wage paycheck
I buy one outfit for a baby I don’t have, a girl

I would name Lily. There are onesies, holiday
shirts, sweaters smocked with the cutest animals

in the kingdom. It’s unlucky to want something so
badly, scolds a friend who offers me charms

for the superstitious and freshly roasted coffee
to counter my practice. I give up

running. Try willing my once-asthmatic body
into womb. Store tiny clothes under the bed.

Sleep soundly on top of them as if whispering
a wish into fruition. Years and years I wait

for Lily to announce herself
like the trumpet of her namesake.

Pink Pill Theory

What piled up piled up
gradually. I kept steady count.

I did not need much. I did so
regularly. Practice clouded the view,

making it difficult to distinguish
things seen from things seem.

Chinook Theory

Having made gravel a kind of home

For sixty miles of footwork I imagine my father alive flying above

Each time the Park Police helicopter circles the Potomac beside the towpath

Imagine how measured the cargo when he was crew chief of a twin-engined monster

(In the seventies his silence not a Soldier’s Heart but Shell Shock)

Near Lejeune my nephew monitors wind on this side of the mountains

He texts when he suspects changing conditions

Careful Nicole a chinook may be coming by which he means wind

But such a coincidence is not geographically precise on this Appalachian stretch

A country away from the correct mountain coast

A year since I spent hours plucking feathers from my father’s hospice bed

Were it possible for a bird to rise up and greet the dead