print previewback JENNY BROWNE
From Which the Method of Drawing in Space between the Trees Instead of the Trees Themselves Might Well Be Employed
You with that fat blade of grass pressed between thumbs, whistling
as if your life depended on it.
You who carried three ideas up into the aspen stand, and kept forgetting two of them.
What remained were the faces of Saudi children
who survived the wedding tent fire.
They arrived in Galveston, wrapped in loose white bark, black eyes darting. I see them
every time the aspen shiver.
Touching one now, a scold of blue jays lifts.
I know cheatgrass, sweet mallow and the cough pellet a magpie leaves. I know the snap when wood burns fast and hot.
You who were supposed to teach them your words for birthday, terror, milk.
Your life depended on it.
One of their names meant fragrant in Arabic.
The god of wind traveling from the southwest was by the Greeks called Lips.
You could say they were all eyes. Exactly, repeated the aspens, exactly. 
Boom
From Which the Method of Drawing in Space between the Trees Instead
of the Trees Themselves Might Well Be Employed
In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing
Jean Valentine Was Here
Nine Miles outside Comfort, Texas
The Oldest Story