The following piece appeared in The American Journal of Poetry:

Avenging Eve

 

Dusk, and my grandmother, the stronger woman,
is thrusting her small garden hoe at a green snake.
The only good one is a dead one, she says, striking.

She renders the creature into twitching tubes.
Its dilated eye is scared slitherless, growing glassier
while the yard dogs panic, wondering what’s next.

Cold apple-red blood spots the south porch concrete.
She rinses the serpent’s defeat away
with her green garden hose as crows

gather in the grove, awaiting pieces
of a small housewife’s victory
over history, over blame, over fear.

 

The following poem appeared at The Common online:

Widower’s Home

Rhythms inside their starter house still speak
to him: doors that won’t lock or seal only
come to with diminishing thumps,
leaving jamb-cracks for light or words.

Windows with glass like sheeting water
tremble when produce trucks monster
by – their loads overweight for his east-west road
the county left unpatched after summer floods.

Ripples of staircase rise: a certain scale.
His fingers plink the banister bars
as step-sounds’ muffled grumble warn:
He’s almost reached the landing.

Sitting out indecision at the top,
he refuses open rooms both right and left.

 

And the following shorter piece appeared in a recent issue of Steel Toe Review:

“The Farm I’ve Willed You”