My winter light is as sharp as a young lover’s fingernails. We are born from a terrible brightness, fresh and shaking, sun-swallowed and full of pastel breath.

Dear one, courageous face of God, tell me your little secrets, polish your fingernails until they shine.

On the other side of my tiny town is one of the most well respected poetry presses in the country, Copper Canyon. I have been told I have what it takes to make it all the way, the whole seventeen blocks. But seventeen years have come and gone. And even the three blocks to the grocery store feel like an odyssey of epic proportions. 

It’s funny how we measure life in blocks. We turn even the most mundane measurements into...

Culture is collective accomplishments made within the confines of laws and traditions. These rules are essential, without them we would have no frame for interpretation. They create complexity by requiring us to work with them, to use them as building blocks that can either be stacked up or knocked down. Cultural rules are essential in developing something I have termed cultural density. I believe density doesn’t only apply to the physical world, but also applies to the world of ideas....

Fingers digging into corduroy, scratching fabric. Counting is not enough, I follow my sheep once I fall asleep. All my infinitives are split. 

To really go to the moon. 
To know the moon is real. 

The sun rises each morning to the forced rhythm of a fifties doo-wop song. 

I am afraid inside every daffodil is a star.
I am afraid life is not but a dream.
I am afraid to wake up. 
I am afraid.