A Choice of Wings (with Tania P)

Perhaps chivalry, hive and liver belong in the same vase on a fur-lined mantle. Women come and go, speaking of Michaelangelo. The widow's second choice arrives preceded by a dream of archipelagos and three-winged birds with indigo feet.

Maybe, when in the midst of a day's hundred indecisions, we actually dare to eat a peach; and in looking inward through a new set of lenses glimpse the soul's most chaotic movements as dazzling symmetries nestled securely within each winged yearning's beautiful shape.

Absence of Presence (Liz B. and Tania P.)

Perhaps it is the absence of presence that leads us to question the coin. We know that the possibility of tossing heads is one half – yet each time it comes up tails. We say that something is wrong. We say that the coin is false.

But truly, neither the querent nor the result of the toss spurred by multiple desires for a single answer figure false, but the fortune assumed gained or lost. Forgotten: the compass of the body in a tech-drunk world where bodies sever peripherally from the heart, nonchalant in the lure of the addiction to sending messages to listeners no longer in the room the body occupies, the sex of distance.

The Scarf (a second collaboration with Tania Pryputniewicz)

Perhaps Amelia disliked the scarf, pale yellow under glass in the San Diego Air and Space Museum, where in a cubicle it sits beside her book, begging the question, when did she last wear it – several times wrapped against her freckled cheek, fringe rippling behind her shoulders miles over the ocean, or perhaps, more likely and responsible for its immaculate preservation, found on her closet floor on top of her boots.

Maybe we are drawn to the scarf in order to question the boundary between the unknown and the known that honors the undercurrent of loss – extending our collective faith beyond the sharp edge of experience and into the arena of exquisite artifact while preparing at the same time for the immense richness of our own individual lift-off.

Beauty to Memory (a collaboration with Tania Pryputniewicz)

Perhaps, just before its end, each sentence descends to earth, however humbly, and the light of this instant polishes the odd green glow of the words, preserving their honest work for fear of a future forgetting.

Maybe future forgetting has its roots in the way the earth conceals its core, an inward melting without trace, red burning gold thus keeping the lawn secure for the bare feet of a woman, her eyes trained on the undersides of green leaves, their spines, her attempt to assign their spectacular beauty to memory before dusk clears her slate.