Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo!
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;
Buffalo buffalo believe Buffalo buffalo
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo, &
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo;

*** Bulgarian (n.) harbor grudges, evil remembrance, resentment

What we want—
payback—
may never come.
Patient ice 
watches water spill.
                                                Everything is time.

Have you seen 
the bee’s sting 
stilled
in archaic amber 
stealth?
                                                It obeys the time.

God tempts— 
God’s love to deliver.
Plotting is temptation. 
Intention’s etch 
scratches your eyes.
                                                It tells the time.

One jab, 
three jabs—two
take a tumble 
over chalk-white cliffs. 
Angry faces of lime.
                                              Rage dies in time.

In your prayer, 
there is 
no time.
Time is thought 
in a room 
                                                of time.

I.
It’s a pixel pasture
where words graze, bold
as black-eyed susans in the ditch.
Click. Send. Throat tight
as a jar of canned juice.
I’ve mapped this distance:
two blue dots on a screen,
glowing like foxfire in the evendark.

II.
Growth of green so hungry, it swallows
the steep incline out my window
And up– up– past the high road
to where the electronic church bell
tones the passing hours.

I trace your voice in the static:
“Someday,” you say.

We accept this benediction.

III.
We don’t speak of the bodies
we’ve been: screen-bright ghosts.
A laugh spills
through the speaker, sudden
as persimmons falling in the road
on KY Highway 1295.

I let the signal slick the silence
between us. My chest sprawls
wide as a field after rain–
then contracts
as it should.

IV.
Tonight, my porch bulb’s yolk-light
sprawls on wet concrete. I’m learning
to hold space
for myself again—steady,
no flinch.

V.
Let the world call this small.
Let it name me unfurling—
you: tendril, tendon. Me: tender
and terrible.

Your pixel sun spills gold
on my oxygen tank. But look: the fireflies
stitch the breathless dark between us.

VI.
We are becoming
barnlight on broken glass,
debris spilling toward a creek
that remembers nothing
but motion.

Come over, I’d say.
Bring your hands—
we’d stain them
with tobacco and tar.
We’d navigate
that labor later.

You died two years yesterday

there isn’t much else to say.

You are not forgotten.

You are not forsaken.

You are not what happened to you.

You are not the pain.

You are breath in the dark.

You are the quiet heartbeat of survival.

You are the girl who lived.

And lives still.

Close your eyes if you can.

Put your hand on your chest.

Feel that rhythm?

That’s your proof.

You are still fighting.

And I am right here with you,
every heartbeat of the way.

A pear’s tender flesh gives in an instant.

A give
give
give
and sudden break.

The jolt of teeth closing a gap
The sudden burst of sweetness on the tongue
The fleeting taste, the juices dribbling down.

Consumption’s joy is in that moment.

But to gorge upon them?
To glut your belly with their flesh,
Let their juices cloy upon your tongue?

Joy turns sour.
Never changing.
Lacking substance.

So, too, with your sweet words.

Adora:
You squeezed
into a one-piece

mounted the rear
of the Rambler
license plate 390-K-W

You rested your legs
between the
rumble seat and the spare

struck your pose,
smiled, showing
what they chauvinistically
called “cheesecake”

We were between
two wars

Thousands walked
the streets

jobs
farms
pride

gone

Lives obsolete

the camera edits all
leaving just the
sassy and young