More on: Carol Ann Davis

There are panels of sky as good as forgotten, Evans’ gelatin folds of Florida circa 1934. The line of sky is dark at first where the gulf hits it, then comes to me like a halo around the palm tree with its neck bent, its spray of branches leaning out of frame as if to…

Today it’s like water in the ear, a slow bleed in the brain, thinking of your bones and the marrow inside them. Last night, half-awake, I leaned into the siren as it passed and thought of Coltrane writing his liner-note prayer —it all has to do with it— and listened for the drumbeat of another…

Black Cross, New Mexico, 1929 (Georgia O’Keeffe)   Twin of the one in my mind, this cross is uneven—blooms like the trunk of a heavy woman, its underside bright as sunset, and under it, O’Keeffe’s hills—like looking at two miles of gray elephants, she said once—a sort of bed where no cross lies down. The…

In all this wind I’m sure you’ll find something empty, an unsent package or the edge of a glass. Perhaps you’ll come back cradled, released to your barest parts. My emptiness loves yours. Can you hear it? As grace and distraction, our many selves bend in order to sing. You’d tell me the better to…

My better angel, my necessary, my made or my born, my homunculus, dwarf star, burning-ship swimmer, my opal and orb, my one truth abandoning or abandoned, long oxbow and pest, my socket and thread, locus and shift, my betrayed and betraying, my thief at the window, broken my bottle, my child gone hungry, room laced…