Indicators of the Probability of Rain

There is little, of course,
to leave behind when you’re not here.
Incisor. Mandible. Quarter moon of bone.

Three Poems

I’m done, too, with this talk of tongues
                        and how a mouth can be undone

by something lifeless as the sea.

To My Indeterminate Half

The ossature of this living moment slips

Beneath your skin, unspoken

Or unbroken without allegory, and if I must now give in

Icicle Creek

At Icicle Creek, I find the fox dead and gray.
I see a woman standing over his corpse.

Her tail whips behind her, stirring air.
I pray to be harmless.

Women’s Work

I work to make
my body a comfort. My body:
            the table where strangers sit to be served

                        as king in a court of cross-stitched
            felons. 

Four Poems

With sight aborted would I be
    you, bloodstone chamber
beside the lost-to-me river?

You be my business?
   Not these words that return you
only in dreams

The Turtle

Translated from the French by Andrew Zawacki