---

Digging for France

In this photo, I am almost six. My father
tells me if I dig deep enough, I will find
France. I shovel and scrape with my hands
while the wet sand collapses in on itself.
As usual, he is distracted, pulling at that pipe
the way he always did, gazing towards the Pacific,
hand angled over his brow as if to salute
some far off place in the distance. Even now,
I wonder what it was he saw.
Behind us sky, seagulls, and sand.
My little gray sturdy brother
busy with his toy cars while I am digging
for France. With my plastic shovel and pail
I scoop my way through the core
of Oregon. I want to be sucked
into the wet hole and pulled out
the other side into a country
of light and long loaves of bread.
It’s not here, it’s not here, I scream
from that sorry ditch as the muck sticks
to my hair, eyelids and teeth.
My father pulls me onto his lap
and wraps me in a sweater smelling faintly
of him, of stale tobacco and wet collie.
And although he’s never been there,
he teaches me words I need to know:
Enfant, rouge, pain au chocolat.

---

---

Tree

Starved of light or water—
fungus-rot eating it like a cancer
from the inside out—even the giant
sequoia will topple one day. This shore pine

done in by the fury
of winter as I listened to wind that gusted
heaving waves over the Pacific.
All night that sea-power
shuddered and thumped. The tree
did not surrender

one branch at a time; an entire body
collapsed—trunk and limbs
clinging to roots that connected it
to earth. Now it waits for chainsaw
and cremation. The ground beneath the
fallen piney crown is soft and sodden;
the air still, silent. Yesterday a house

of branches grew outside my window.
Now, the hollow where life uprooted itself
yawns like a mouth without a voice.
There’s a hole in the landscape, phantom
emptiness against the sky.

---

---

Amanda’s Trail

In 1864, Amanda De-Cuys, a blind Coos woman, was removed from her home
and forced to walk some 50 miles to be relocated at the Coast Reservation near
what is now Yachats, Oregon.

It was her way to embrace circles of seasons
in an abundance of bulbs, roots, berries;
to harvest mussels in the low and salty estuary—
until she became a refugee in her own homeland.

It was her way to lay the dead
in canoes hung from branches, always
facing west. Those boats would sway
in the breeze as souls rowed into the next world.
Which of us wouldn’t enter eternity like that?

It was her way to leave gifts
for that long journey: basket, knife, blanket—
until those gifts were stolen for souvenirs.
It was her way to trust the shaman,
until the diseases came and there were no more
living to tend to the dying.

Today, we lace our boots and ready packs
to step into forest’s ripe and sudden smells
on the flanks of Cape Perpetua.
The same cliffs, chasms, streams, rocks.
The same churning waves in the distance.

The path before us curves like the parenthesis of history.
We can’t see its end as we cross over a bridge,
traverse switchbacks, follow twisting trail
to pause at a knoll overlooking the expansive sea.
Cedars press green spirit-weave against the sky—
dappled with light, rooted in darkness.

---

---

On Grief

Text of poem, fuzzy in the shape of a circle:

Mute
Scream
Travel
Retreat
Starve
Binge
Drink
Abstain
Shop
Save
Netflix
Hulu
Write
Read
Hot Powered Yoga
Kundalini
Do Something Drastic to Your Appearance
Wear the Same Outfit for Days on End
Work
Sleep
Breathe
Repeat

In the middle, upside-down:

Grief is a blurry imperfect circle.

---

---

On Reading Poems, I Now Sympathize With
Daughters Of Dead Mothers

For Freida Hughes

It’s hard to look at this picture of Frieda and not feel something tragic—
mother, father, brother dead,
one by oven, one by cancer, one by hanging.

It’s hard just to look at this picture of Frieda, with her menagerie
of pets, poems, and paintings.
Yes, I mean the Frieda with an e,

not Frida Kahlo.
Frieda Hughes, I want to buy one of your paintings

a green one
representing the joy of being able to work on my poetry
or something other creative.

Frieda Hughes, I want to eat all of your mother’s poems
and all of your paintings.

It’s hard not to look at Frieda and feel
something kindred—
us daughters of dead mothers.

It’s hard to look at Frieda and feel
something so protective,
to say to us through our mothers

There, there. You made it.

---

---

On Finding Your Ashes In My Suitcase

I think you would laugh if I told you,
your urn exploded somewhere
during my flight back to Miami.

And when I got home, I found you spilled
your ashes all over the inside of my luggage.
Actually, it was your luggage—

the Liz Claiborne zebra print carry-on
with the dragon fruit interior.
The flight was oversold, so I was forced

to check you in your luggage.
What kind of monster
makes a grieving daughter check her own mother?

---

---

On The Last Moments Leading Up To Your Death

(excerpt)

The Hospice nurse’s name is Natalie. She hands me a book to prepare me for your death. She tells me it won’t be long.

---

You die around 4:44 p.m. There are four of us in the room: Dad, your twin sisters, and me. It’s too much for your mother, and I’ve asked the others to give us space. It’s too many people for you to let go of. And I know who you really want there. Your heart is strong so it takes long for your body to go. I try walking away to see if that might help you transition. You hold on. I hold your feet at the end of the bed. It isn’t until I whisper in your ear, Thank you for being such a good mother to me. I love you. You can go now. that you finally let yourself go. I count every one of your breaths. Watch the slower and slower rise and fall of your chest. The rattle of each last breath. Until Dad tells me that’s it. I look at the clock. Then I text Natalie to let her know you’re gone.

---

---

On The Last Moments Leading Up To Your Death

(excerpt)

It’s the only time I see Dad cry in 40 years. He says you’ll be gone in three days. I ask why he didn’t tell me sooner. He says he didn’t know it would happen so fast. There were signs we didn’t see, but you had said you’d let me know when to come home. You did, and I don’t blame you. You couldn’t know what you didn’t want to know. You just kept pretending, even from the Hospice bed at home. How could I be surprised that you would pretend that everything was fine? Your entire life was pretending, making everyone believe that everything was fine.

---

---

When We Finish Playing Cootie

He pulls my bug’s blue head off of its red
body and laughs until his breath runs out.
I flash to him laughing and knocking me
to the kitchen tile in a hug that tears the tissue
in my knee. The sudden smash of his skull
on my nose when I lean in for a kiss. The red
trails cut by fingernails across my face, white
scars across over-stretched skin. I put this
head and body back together and laugh
when my son tears it apart again.

---

---

content warning for cancer

Eldritch Horror

We hit the card
that makes us lose
half of everything:
half of our items,
spells, & clue tokens
tossed into the box.
I watch you decide
which spell to lose.
Your forehead wrinkles
remind me of our
newborn boys—
the lines easier to see
now that you’ve lost
all of your hair.
It’s been two months
since you lost half
of your testicles
and half of your
tumors. It’s been
seven weeks of
chemicals in your
blood. You roll
the dice to cast
the spell you
chose to keep.
You only need
one success.

---