"I’m different than other babies. Their gemstone eyes, chubby everythings, innate ability to wiggle. Me? I’m one legal-sized sheet of paper, blue lines barely visible..."
"She has given / over to the probability of loss, which is enough / to make one ask, How shall the heart be / reconciled from this feast? How shall it / remain intact to keep her going wherever she needs to go?"
"don’t leave me alone. i don’t want to talk to anyone but now it’s the only thing that forces me to materialize into something solid. my brain drifts with the clouds out the window, past the frame. wisps of something hard lick at my edges like flames, and i shy away..."
"1. you are headed south to be with your dying sister; while 2. your idiot heart rises toward bliss to be sailing like an improbably bulky bird across this heartbreak beautiful pedestrian winter Western Oregon farmland..."
"A family of mice becomes a single garter snake. A woodchuck becomes a pangolin. An elephant becomes a herd of Jersey cows. You ask how it works. A machine creates a powerful vacuum..."
"The crow pecks wildly. He’s scarred by last night’s tar and feather. 'Apparently so,' says the raccoon, 'in crow culture the rites of adulthood are cast early.' 'Only the old-fashioned believe such stories,' the crow mutters to the shrike..."