Painted Bride Quarterly’s Slush Pile

We’re changing things up today, Slushies, with a selection of prose from writer Charles Grosel. Spoiler alert: we only read the first page in the podcast itself. If you want the full experience of the piece before you hear us weigh in, scroll down to time stamp 38:15 where you can listen to the story in its entirety. 

We’re all over the place in categorizing this piece as flash, fiction, and creative non-fiction. We discuss what literary elements are on display and which are not. Dagne notes the piece’s economy recalls Raymond Carver’s advice ‘to get in, get out, don’t linger.’ One character’s black-and-white outlook reminds KVM of the phrase “perfect certainty” that Sam used in a recent book review. Sam weighs in on the veracity, in general, of an author’s perspective. For example, she finds the famous fairy tale author, Hans Christian Andersen, an unreliable narrator based on his autobiography. Jason has thoughts about that habit of embellishment and about the iconic nature of the American Southwest. And listen in for the only thing that qualifies as pizza for KVM’s 90 year-old dad.

Sam also shares some of what she’s teaching to her writing students this semester, including a piece published in PBQ Issue 112 by Meghan Sterling called “Self-Portrait as Lee Krasner” that sent her students to the Smithsonian to see Krasner’s paintings in person. Thanks, as always, for listening!

At the table: Eric Baker, Dagne Forrest, Karen Hildebrand, Samantha Neugebauer, Jason Schneiderman, Kathleen Volk Miller, Lisa Zerkle, and Alina H. (Sound Tech)

Author Bio: Charles Grosel grew up in Ohio and now lives in Arizona. He has published stories in Western Humanities Review, Water-Stone, and The MacGuffin as well as poems in Epiphany, The Threepenny Review, and Cream City Review, among others. He has been a long-time student of The Writers Studio in NYC and would not get any work done without their support. His chapbook is The Sound of Rain Without Water.

Rain in the Valley of the Sun

Slushies! We’re delighted to have our own Marion Wrenn back at the table, throwing thumbs yea or nay. And Karen Hildebrand had so much fun discussing summer reads in our last episode, she decided to join us for another show (we welcome her back with only minor hazing). Today we’re discussing two poems by K. Hari. The first, “Rage Yoga After Roe”, gets us thinking about female spaces and friendships. We discuss what kind of poems can stand-alone and which ones are best in a manuscript when other poems can inform their narrative.

The second poem, “Proof of Relationship”, digs deep into multiple layers of memory in relation to what is and isn’t evident in a photograph. What does it mean when a couple must perform their relationship in order to prove it in an official capacity? The theme of governmental intrusion into one’s personal life in the form of immigration interviews resonates with the team. Our New Yorkers recognize certain landmarks mentioned in the poem, including the Vessel in Hudson Yards. And Jason gives it to us straight —New Yorkers ARE judging your fashion choices. We end with our terrible memories of the utter despair of Zoom dance parties. Thanks, as always, for listening.

At the table: Karen Hildebrand, Samantha Neugebauer, Jason Schneiderman, Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Lisa Zerkle, Derek Grebis (sound engineer)

Author Bio: K. Hari (she/her) is a physician and poet of Tamil descent, whose work explores embodied heritage through poetic formalism. Her writing can be found in publications such as the New Orleans Review, the Journal, and the Margins, among others. She is winner of the 2024 Plentitudes Poetry Prize and the 2026 Third Coast Poetry Prize. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University and is a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist. She welcomes you to connect with her via Instagram: @scribeinscrubs.

Social media: @scribeinscrubs

Rage Yoga After Roe

Proof of Relationship

We’re back, Slushies! Did you miss us? We missed being with you. Much of our time this summer was spent reading an array of excellent books and today we share that abundance with you. Our wide-ranging conversation touches on blockbusters, novels, poetry, craft books, and (would you believe), an encyclical from Pope Leo XIV. Kathy gets a gold star, summer-reading-challenge style, for the stack of books she read on the beach. Dagne weighs in on the plus side for audio books. And several editors are fans of book-of-the month style subscriptions, whether from Book of the Month, or indie bookstores like The Lynx and Main Street Books. Joining in on the discussion is special guest, Karen Hildebrand, one of our dedicated PBQ editors.

All this talk of reading has us wondering how or if we ought to keep track of all of our reads. An online platform? A spiral notebook? How do you track your reads, Slushies? Let us know and, while you’re at it, share your summer reading faves with us. We’ll be back at the Slush Pile for our next episode but we hope you enjoy our reading enthusiasms. Thanks, as always, for listening.

At the table: Dagne Forrest, Karen Hildebrand, Jason Schneiderman, Kathleen Volk Miller, Lisa Zerkle, Derek Grebis (Sound Engineer)

PBQ Staff Reading Recs:

Marion Wrenn

Teaching Writing Through Journaling: Journaling as a Tool for Learning and Well-Being 

by Kathleen Volk Miller

Magnifica Humanitas by Pope Leo XIV

Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry by Ada Limón

Kathleen Volk Miller

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

Gladiola Girls by Marion Wrenn

11/22/63 by Stephen King

Jason Schneiderman

Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi

Final Slash Boy by Stephen S. Mills

Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney

Dagne Forrest

Endling by Maria Reva

PBQ Issue 5

Chandelier by David O’Meara

Samantha Neugebauer

The Au Pair by Teddy Wayne

The Enlargement of Life by John Kekes

Tutelary Tales by Villy Sorensen

Lisa Zerkle

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry by Mary Oliver

A Stranger is an Animal Who Does Not Sing by Brian Teare from Albion Books: A Poetry Micropress

Karen Hildebrand

Her Read by Jennifer Sperry Steinorth

A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan

Wrong Norma by Anne Carson

(Bonus! See PBQ editor Samantha Neugebauer’s review of Wrong Norma here)

Emily Fedon

It Will Come Back to You: Collected Stories by Sigrid Nunez

Dear Monica Lewinsky by Julia Langbein

Sex and Rage by Eve Babitz

Alexa Josaphouitch

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

Most Eligible by Isabelle Engel

Greetings, Slushies! In this, our final encore episode for the summer, we revisit two poems from Glenn Shaheen. We hope you enjoy the conversation. We’ll be back in your feeds with a brand new episode on September 9. Thanks, as always for listening.

Our first order of business was debating lifestyle choices in NY vs. Philly, after which we dug into two wonderfully different poems by Glenn Shaheen. “Imago” plunged us into an elegaic interrogation of modern life, identity, and poetics framed by both the real world and open world gaming. With Glenn’s poem as our guide we roamed wide, touching on gaming terminology, Bey’s “Single Ladies” and 2008 as the last year of optimism, Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, Shakespeare’s “filthy” Sonnet 135, and the ageless concern over the shelf life of language in poems and artistic works. The circular format of short, interlinked stanzas in the second poem, “Power and Punish”, introduced a real change in tone in the discussion. Frankly, we wondered if the poem’s format and approach would allow us to discuss it. We were delighted to discover it was possible, if different – but hey, you be the judge!

Some links we think you’ll like:

NPC (Non Player Character) on WikiHow

Beyoncé - Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)

Michel Foucault on the Panopticon Effect, Farnham Street blog

At the table: Marion Wrenn, Kathleen Volk Miller, Jason Schneiderman, Dagne Forrest, Isabel Petry

Website: https://glennshaheen.com/

IMAGO

DROSOPHILA MUTANTE

Hello, Slushies! We hope you’re keeping cool out there. In this encore episode, KVM rhapsodizes about the joy of a sandwich made with a perfect summer tomato. And Jason shares his astute thoughts on the nature of motherhood. Join in while the panel takes on three poems from poet Sarah Elkins. And thanks, as always for listening.

Are you ready to get primal, Slushies? We look at poems of birth and mothering that call on the senses as they shift between what’s animal and what’s human in us. Kathy celebrates the pure, messy pleasure of a classic tomato sandwich and Jason reminds us why an irregular opening line can be the hook a poem needs, while we all marvel at a poem’s ability to dazzle us with changing perspectives, locations, and personas. Oh, and strong titles get some much deserved love too.

This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show. 

At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Jason Schneiderman, Samantha Neugebauer, and Dagne Forrest

Sarah Elkins is a poet, teacher, and reader. Sarah earned a BA with majors in English & Philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University. Sarah is the director of the West Virginia Interscholastic Cycling League where she works to get more kids on bikes. She and her husband, Max, own & operate Hammer Cycles bike shop in Lewisburg, WV.

Author website: https://www.sarahelkins.com/

The summer before my son was born, I ate tomato sandwiches

with mayonnaise, salt and pepper.

The rain was so heavy in June, the fruit

swelled on the vines and their skins ripped.

I took big bites holding thick bread with two hands,

pink rainwater running down both forearms

to my elbows—everything reduced, then,

to hunger. At night, curled on my side

in the un-airconditioned dark

I dreamt of big cats’ razor tongues

dragging the length of my back,

saber teeth at my throat, not tearing

the skin but feeling for pulse,

their muscled hips coaxing me 

into the sweaty delirium of my final weeks.

The cats returned every night until

twenty-six hours before I howled him into being,

I opened. All the rain of June, and July

leaving me for the hardwood floor

where I crouched on all fours looking

for flecks of vernix, tasting my wet fingers,

sniffing the sweet water for signs it was time.

The cats slunk away until now, eating

this tomato sandwich, my first in twelve years—

I recall I was a panther once.

I floss at night after steak and butter.

My house: unguarded range, bison huffing,

ice-faced, hooves stamping an echo stutter.

I do nothing in this boundless nothing.

No thought, no synapse firing. Still hands still

stained—berry juice of an empty morning.

This room-less space, a translucent thin will

through which I, good sow, whiff my boy’s homing.

His trek complete, except for the recount—

bighorn sheep, bull moose, near miss, eagle plume.

I toss one sleek mink to the catamount.

The grass lies down; walls rise around my room.

            Ursa fades. A house cat lurks in willow.

            I sip gin, smooth the pelt of my pillows.

Greetings, Slushies! We’re here with an encore episode today, one we chose for its excellent exploration of craft, including a discussion about the golden shovel and the definition of ambiguity. Listen in for that and for two poems from poet Marko Capoferri. Enjoy. Thanks, as always, for listening.

How do you pronounce “San Gorgonio,” Slushies? How do you say “Schuylkill?” We talk regional accents, local knowledge, and artistic craft-- from the risks of the pathetic fallacy to the unknowability of metaphor, the art of ambiguity, and, of course, the golden shovel. Join us for an episode devoted to poems by Marko Capoferri where we discuss poetic craft, resonant symbols, and the peculiar power of telephone poles.  

What can’t you pronounce where you live? 

Links to things we discuss that you may dig:  

Eula Biss’s “Time and Distance Overcome” 

Jennifer L. Knox’s “Irwin Allen Vs. The Lion Tamer” 

At the table: Katheleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Jason Schneiderman, Samantha Neugebauer, Larissa Morgano & Kate Wagner 

This episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show.

Marko Capoferri is a poet, musician, and former conservation worker. He has lived and worked in eight US states, including Montana, where he has lived since 2015. He received an MFA in poetry from the University of Montana in Missoula. His work has appeared in The Shore, Painted Bride Quarterly, Porter House Review, and elsewhere.

Instagram: Instagram.com/markocapoferri 

Two more recent publications:

https://www.stoneboatwi.com/issue-14-2/capoferri

https://sequestrum.org/contributor-spotlight-marko-capoferri

San Gorgonio 

White paper coffee cups collect in drifts 

by the freeway exit ramp—the hearts of ghosts 

once held tight then tossed out the window 

of a car speeding across the desert at four a.m. 

trying to stay awake to see, when the light 

came back, what the battered face of the land 

could tell us about ourselves: how the mountains 

were stark and risen; how we were sunk dumb 

in between, a scathing plain of wind turbines 

resonating unearthly as Amelia Earhart's flooded engines 

chugging their final gasp on the ocean floor;   

how the sea was here once and swallowed heights, 

long since yawned and pulled away paving 

this desert with a tired yellow dirt now blown 

through our teeth, through our beating pistons, 

and a few black rounded stones as souvenirs 

from lost time; how thistle-studded towns 

were hardly refuge; how the many stones 

we had gathered were bright and jagged, 

too young by design to tell any real story; 

how lust and lost became an exchange in glances 

through a motel’s cracked facade; how these roads 

kept on dressing down like lightning on a postcard 

running fingers in the hot mouth of experience. 

Self-portrait with Elegy 

Just like we were on the Great Plains 

in 1949, my father and I would gather 

summer nights with neighbors 

lining our country road to watch 

constellations disbanding. Whether tragedy 

or a tragic lack of imagination, it’s hard 

to say—he and I simply could not see 

any threads or their severing. Then, 

as now, telephone wires also lined the road 

linking the night one lighted island 

at a time, though the wires are now dead 

gestures, props to a faded empire 

of distant voices made close but never 

close enough to turn that light 

into warmth. What’s left—sinking 

into my own humidity, my own 

expanse of darkness, and he 

to his own. As you read this 

it is surely a summer night some place 

the land extends forever 

until it gives up where the visible 

begins to visibly waver, either 

from the heat or from the failure 

of the possibilities of sight. 

Greetings, Slushies! Today’s encore edition features special guest editor, the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Gregory Pardlo. His most recent collection is called “Spectral Evidence.” Listen along to the discussion of two poems from Daniel Biegelson which were ultimately included in his book “Of Being Neighbors” from Ricochet Editions. Thanks, as always, for listening! 

On this week’s episode of the Slush Pile, we review two prose poems by the author Daniel Biegelson labeled “Neighbors III” and “Neighbors IV”. Kathleen and the gang welcome Pulitzer Prize winner Gregory Pardlo to the editorial table for this very exciting iteration of the podcast. Everyone was intrigued to delve into the works Daniel Biegelson provided for us and were quite pleased to find that they offered interesting conversation.

Daniel Biegelson is the author of the chapbook Only the Borrowed Light (VERSE) and Director of the Visiting Writers Series at Northwest Missouri State University. An Associate Editor for The Laurel Review, his poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Cream City Review, Denver Quarterly, DIAGRAM,  FIELD, Meridian, Salt Hill Journal, & Third Coast, among other places. He hails from New Jersey—a fact that means more to him than it probably should.

Did these poets survive the gauntlet? Listen on to find out!

Let us know what you think about these three poems and this episode on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook with #HelloNeighbor

Present at the Editorial Table: 

Engineering Producer: 

Daniel Biegelson

Neighbors (II)

Replace Glass Heart with Scalpel.  Call for rain. Glisten. Close up. Magnify a leaf until the drop brims with color. Replace leaf with wind. Every June we lose limbs to straight line winds—elm, maple, oak, ash, etc., etc. They come knocking at night. Redact redundancy. Extinguish the list. Insert space. Remove the catalog. Remove, stack, and mulch the dead wood. Map my internal geography. I am a bowl of cold plums. I am a body of words in uproar and otherwise. Replace words with birds. Fill a tree. Take your pick. Redact free will. Replace map with mine. Relieve the workers. Every day we leave labor(s) behind. Exchange labor(s) with neighbor(s).The dark soil laced with slim roots swells and subsides beneath us. As the tide. Breathing. Who are you. Extinguish the implicit. We are the answer. Some of us are no longer breathing. I am used to defending the singularity of our experiences, but grow concerned about reducing the dead to their individuality. Redact redeem. We linger longer in blue light. We are not what we say or do.

Neighbors (III)

Replace dog with brother. Take walks on burnt grass and return under treeless sky. Exchange directives for best practices. Practice your run along the fence line. Monarchs carry on along the highways lined with causal wildflowers. Extinguish your sense of silence. You let your dog shit in my yard. The ocean levels rise. Mortgage rates rise. Don’t pretend to love one another. Turn your predatory beak. Redact the brackish ocean. Turn it black and red. Exchange ocean for consumption. Predatory lending of labor. Be still. We are the colony of bees in collapse and also the tractor trailer stocked with hives and the long driver on the CB radio and the farmers waiting for pollinators. See the red dust clouds rolling. See the black clouds closing. A tongue over a top lip. Bite hard and rain. Extinguish the dog barking. Redact the self. Exchange dog for children. Barking for howling. There is a wall beyond which our labor persists without us and we don’t dare to look. Replace words with words. Yours or mine. We don’t act upon what we see. Redact the sea. We are the murmurations leafing out over the highway. Pouring over the sky. We suffer decentered as we imagine stone. Human again. We don’t know each other at all.

For this Slush Pile encore, we’re going WAY back to our first season where we revisit an episode featuring poems by Laura McCullough. McCullough has a collection forthcoming from Cornerstone Press called “The Collection Jar.” This episode also features the poet Jennifer L. Knox as a guest editor. Her most recent book is “Crushing It” from Copper Canyon Press. We hope you enjoy this look back into the archive.

In this podcast, we discuss three of Laura McCullough’s poems. The box score above is the spoiler alert: though today’s podcast crew spanned from the east coast to Iowa, included an undergrad and people who’ve done this work of editing for more than two decades, we were unanimously enamored of all three poems.

Welcome to Episode 11 of PBQ’s Slush Pile! In this podcast, we discuss three of Laura McCullough’s poems. The box score above is the spoiler alert: though today’s podcast crew spanned from the east coast to Iowa, included an undergrad and people who’ve done this work of editing for more than two decades, we were unanimously enamored of all three poems.

“Leafless” moved us and took us on a journey that also spanned decades. “Reclaimed Wood” told a tale we only want even more of, and “Maggot Therapy” simply left us thunderstruck. Read along and listen in—these poems are even more breathtaking aloud.

She hates the word feminist and she’s no stranger to PBQ! Laura McCullough is an award-winning poet with six (!) poetry collections which include her most recent, Jersey Mercy, which narrates the lives of two people affected by Hurricane Sandy. Watch a brief interview after her first book or watch part of a reading from this past spring. Check out more of her work on her website.

The fact that we were going to discuss Laura’s work and we’ve known her for years, spurred us to invite Jennifer L. Knox to join us for this episode, as Jennifer fits a similar profile: she’s a poet whose work we admire and the added bonus—we can call her a friend.

We discussed the conundrum many of us find ourselves in—how difficult is it to be a poet who wants to send work to journals she loves and respects, but whose editors she knows well. No one wants to be published out of obligation or to put her friend in an awkward position. The flip side is just as bad: no editor takes pleasure out of rejecting anyone, let alone a friend. Our discussion focused on social ties and aesthetic taste—or, as Jennifer put it, discerning the “heart-to-brains-to-balls ratio” of any given magazine or press in order to find the right home for your work. Listen in as we explore our practices, then chime in on our FB event page and share your own.

Sign for our email list if you’re in the area, and even if you’re not!

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Follow us on Twitter @PaintedBrideQ and Instagram @paintedbridequarterly.  Don't forget to subscribe and rate us on our iTunes page!

Read on!

Present at the Editorial Table:

Kathleen Volk Miller

Marion Wrenn

Jason Schneiderman

Alexa Josaphouitch

Tim Fitts

Jennifer Knox

Production Engineer:

Joe Zang

PBQ Box Score: 3:0

------------------------

Leafless

We're bringing back favorite episodes over the summer as encore editions. Since this episode first aired, poet Jen Siraganian won the 2026 Perugia Press Prize for her debut collection "Everything Has Been Moved, Even the Dead," which is forthcoming in September 2026. Congratulations, Jen! 

Slushies, we invoke the retelling of a ghostly experience shared by Kathy and Marion at the Hotel Figueroa in California earlier this year partway into this episode. Two poems by Jen Siraganian are at the heart of our discussion, and it’s the first of these that puts ghosts into our heads. This poem also causes us to consider at some length the physical form chosen by or for a poem, and how this can utterly enhance the experience of the poem when it’s just right. It’s also an opportunity for Jason to raise the spectre of the virgule (or slash) once again, and we even pause briefly to recall when WYSIWYG was a useful acronym. We end the episode with an ekphrastic that prompts an on-the-spot tie breaker (thanks to our sound engineer Lillie for saving the day!).

https://whitney.org/collection/works/2171

https://www.nga.gov/collection/highlights/gorky-the-artist-and-his-mother.html 

At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Marion Wrenn, Lisa Zerkle, Jason Schneiderman, Dagne Forrest, Jodi Gahn, Derek Grebis (sound engineer)

Jen Siraganian is an Armenian-American writer, educator, and former Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, California. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in AGNI, Barrow Street, Best New Poets, Cortland Review, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, Smartish Pace, and other journals. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won the 2024 New Ohio Review Poetry Prize. A former managing director of Litquake: San Francisco’s Literary Festival, she is a current Lucas Artist Fellow. jensiraganian.com   

Social media handles:

Facebook @jen.siraganian, Instagram @jsiraganian, Bluesky @jsiraganian.bsky.social, Website

Walking into St. James Cathedral as If We Were Already Ghosts

My Father and I View Two Versions of Arshile Gorky’s The Artist and his Mother

Lip corners sink, an upturned bowl

of her dress. Her eyes, Armenian saucers

Sharing color only, no overlap of limbs

her lap, a paleness descends. My father

his mothers, the one who raised him,

to discuss the lack of daisies in the boy’s hands,

Instead, he stands, cloud-drifts across the gallery.

He points to the ferns feuding with triangles,

This last episode before summer has us dreaming of the beach, Slushies—watching moonlight on the waves, reading novels in the sand. But not before we share this packed episode with you. Today we welcome special guest, Daniel Kuriakose, to hear about “The Common Well,” the literary journal he’s relaunching alongside K Hank Jost. Daniel sticks around for our discussion of two poems by Mara Lee Grayson.  

We admire the duality on display in the first poem’s back and forth-ness which has us pondering the undulation of its syntax. The late reveal of whom the lyric speaker addresses is satisfying surprise. A clever turn of phrase sends the more seasoned members of the team straight to this 90’s Divinyls’ song. The way enjambment revises meaning after a line break in both of these poems reminds Jason of Heather McHugh’s poetry. And ultimately Kathy bring us back to the two questions we ask of every submission: do you want to stay with the poem and do you want to share it? Join us in sharing our deep thanks for two members of our staff who are with us for the final time: Reese, our co-op, and Lillie, our sound engineer. Best of luck to your both in the future. Thank you, Reese! Thank you, Lillie! Over the summer, keep tuning in for a retrospective with deep cuts from our archive. Thanks, as always, for listening! 

At the table: Dagne Forrest, Tobi Kassim, Daniel Kuriakose (special guest from “A Common Well”), Reese Pfunder, Jason Schneiderman, Kathleen Volk Miller, Lisa Zerkle, Lillie Volpe (sound engineer), Derek Grebis (sound engineer) 

Author Bio: Mara Lee Grayson’s poetry has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Tampa Review, and Nimrod, among other literary journals, and has been nominated multiple times for the Best of the Net and Pushcart Prizes. Grayson is the author or editor of five books of nonfiction. She holds an MFA from The City College of New York and a PhD from Columbia University and was previously a tenured professor in the California State University system. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, she currently resides in New Jersey.  

Social media: @maraleegrayson 

Website: maragrayson.com 

She Winds Her Stems through Fire for Burning Leaves Fend Off the Grief of Being Mowed

On the trampoline, young boys next door

             bounce while inside, their mothers

debate wine or coffee. Another weekend

             when the county’s on emergency alert. 

For now, bees land on dogwood flowers, 

             robins nest in tall trees 

planted by the prior owners,

             and my husband’s on his knees out back

for hours, pulling branches from hydrangeas

             I have neither time nor thumb 

to nurture back to life. He’s learned a lot

             in efforts to identify the colony of ants 

that sent a scout across our deck, through 

             the side door to a cat food bowl, 

like what distinguishes Bumblebee 

             from Carpenter (they look the same, 

the bumble fuzzier). A million years 

             of evolution, the male bee 

still hovers in one place, waiting 

             for a female to fly by. I fold laundry

then look up which buds bloomed 

             in 17th Century Versailles. (You’d guess 

invasive species but, unironically,

             it’s narcissus and orange blossoms.) 

For years, I worshipped palms 

             on the other side of the Continental Divide, 

like I was replanted, like new soil 

             could change the nature of the seed.

I looked for lightning and caught language

             in my mouth. I dreamed of blooms, 

then woke up in the desert, 

             staring at a mountain, believed to be 

an imprint of ancient gods whose voices 

             echoed off the surface of the earth. 

The nervous system replicates in utero,

             its fight or flight part predetermined, 

part piano keys the brain may tap. Healing,

             says the therapist, happens in the pendulation.

Insects bounce along the glass as children, 

             mothers sip merlot in coffee mugs, 

and the man I married after you 

             tans wrist to elbow, scratching up his forearms 

rending dead wood stems. It’s sticky business,

             caught between my lush, infertile soil and flirting 

with the bees, he knows that when I think about you, 

             I touch my self-concept on the page. 

What the Fortune Teller Tells Me on the Night I Leave California

The Channel Islands will one day rise up

in the distance like a resurrected poet 

high on mescaline and memories

of pretty women. You will or won’t 

learn how to tunnel through a prison 

of the mind. When the wind picks up, she says 

she was awoken by the rumble of a saw 

told so many times it must be true. 

You might as well 

drive six years backward, park beside a pool 

in west New Jersey. 

                                   I think she means 

beginnings are like endings: eyelid work, 

a neuron matter, not ontology or god. 

To transit is to navigate the synapses, 

trade one water for another, 

every body’s chemistry the same 

except for how the furniture’s arranged, 

which pieces we keep secret from ourselves. 

She eschews the label hypocrite, 

calls herself a hippopotamus instead.

Oh, she’s drinking like a river now, 

but can you honestly say you’ve never felt 

a kinship for a living being who could crush you

and the glass of bourbon in your hand?

Maybe when you were a child, your father 

chalked equations on a dusty blackboard.

Your height in centimeters 

is your adolescent telephone number 

divided by the times your mother screamed 

bringing you into this world.