I. Anxiety
All day my heart is a snake, molting skin it is not ready to shed.
II. Backyard Sanctuary
Bees abandon the weeping bottlebrush tree, dive-bomb the pool at dusk.
III. Call and Response
Courting peacocks strum feathers, rattling themselves into resonance.
IV. Desquamate
Departing its summer surface, my back zests itself like a lemon.
V. Escape
Elephantine with the twin tusks of guilt and relief, I walk the dogs.
VI. Familiarity
Forgetting my mask because it has become like my keys, I check the fridge.
VII. Grief
Getting on my red soles, I catwalk the runway of this apocalypse.
VIII. Happiness
How the Thai noodles tingle on my tongue, left on my doorstep still hot.
IX. Insomnia
Interrogating the floor, my feet blister faulty jurisdictions.
X. June
Juvenescent garden, planted for triumph, where is your promised yield?
XI. Kitchen
Knives dulling like minds, bread throwing off its crust—this is a rebellion.
XII. Lizard
Lodged like a branch in the dying orange lawn: that fucking iguana.
XIII. Menopause
My epidermis prickles, poked with heated, invisible toothpicks.
XIV. November
Note how stone crab claws are delivered now to our own private hammers.
XV. Owl
Over our heads, the outflow of disturbed air is almost visual.
XVI. Pilates
Pencil of my spine, write my muscles into bold, capital letters.
XVII. Quirks of the Season
Quixotic hurricanes are Greek theater, curtaining two alphabets.
XVIII. Roots
Repel the larvae of army moths, whose mouths suck this new sod like suns.
XIX. Scar
Sewn by hand, a curtain I long to close, my crooked face hangs on screen.
XX. Tremor
These finger flinches, these jellied knuckles, these wincing palms, such shy alms.
XXI. Unnatural
Unmasked and helmetless riders roar by on motorbikes, percussive.
XXII. Verisimilitude
Vivid odes erupt from the sky as planes runway, circle, land again.
XXIII. Weathering
When thunder voices disappointment, then leaves, a cloud-father follows.
XXIV. X Factor
Xenial custom for future pandemics: Bring your own forks and knives.
XXV. Yield
You rise from your dense mud-slumber, come back to life without asking why.
XXVI. Zeitgeist
Zombie-minded, we are the past-knowing, post-dreaming generation.