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In the south the orange juice is so thick the pulp catches between my teeth. Every night my dogs chase the bunny who refuses his backyard eviction; they’re pouncing and weaving, always missing. Theirs is a dumb violence—a giddiness for the baby bird perplexed by flight, and rooted in the garden bed.

The idea had been beautiful in its simplicity: Make Guardian Angels literal by building androids for children. Train the Angels to recognize the pitch and tenor of the children’s voices, to notice the slightest changes in tension or elation. Equip them with motion sensors to monitor the children’s location and the ability to measure the space between their bodies and dangerous objects—still-hot stovetops, second-story windows, abandoned Legos poised upright on the carpet, shattered green glass in alleys. Embed the Angels with GPS and cameras to deter kidnappers. Program the Angels to never leave the children’s side.

Someone looking at the large photograph hanging on the spacious sitting room wall would imagine that there was something anomalous about it. An anomaly impossible to define at first glance, and perhaps not at second glance, yet there was no shame in continuing to look. After all, these large photographs in their carefully chosen frames hung there for everyone to look at in contemplation of their static details.

by Sarah Fawn Montgomery Dig Site  ~ San Miguel, California, 1991 What I find: a tiny wooden horse, smooth from where blade whittled wood, legs delicate as matchsticks. A golden stamp, slick replica of the ones my mother lets me lick. A tiny silver spoon with an engraving of New York State to hold in …

The Japanese fished my grandfather from the ocean. An unwanted catch, part of a shoal of broken men. Barefoot and barely dressed, they were forced to march through the streets of Macassar. Burning tarmac blistered their feet, the sun stripped salt-stained skin from their shoulders.

Curled in the center 

                       she is fixed

           to her  

                       atmosphere

                                  torn strips of silver

does it end, forgotten darling—
the earth
your rope
what it feels like to know?

My skeleton hides, teases, 

makes burlesque 

adjustments: peek-a-boo 

rib cage, scapula.

Smoke has made room for rains,
and I want to stave the yellowing
of leaves on my apple tree.
I want my persimmons to wait
just a bit more.
I want time to savor
what I knew and still forgot
was breathtaking.

I expect nothing of the other side,
if that’s what death is—some other

side of being. I’m inclined
to believe it’s mere cessation,

an absence of words, no breath.