Selected excerpts

Participles Dangling I taught hysterically today     Voice too loud     Paced Laughed maniacally     Squeezed Hair the color of sheaves Cobalt eyes Crimson blood and scarlet heart Of our whispering unborn child     Into “be” verbs     And participles dangling. I wanted a girl With your slender     questing fingers Feb. 17, 1993

An Excerpt from the poem We Had Our Best Discussions in the Bathtub

Each morning I toweled you dry,

Sucked in the clean linen, earth after rain

        Scent of you

And when you were dry and warm

I slipped into your bathwater,

Steeped myself in the essences

        you left behind

Exalting in the thin patina of you

I wore like a second skin

        the rest of the day.

Perhaps that’s what went wrong with us:

We stopped talking in the bathtub.