The Guest (with Tania P)

Perhaps the body in sleep unburdens its flock of questions, like so many winged sirens, into the sky of dream. As varied as the spectrum of birds from sparrow to phoenix and the unsplit spheres of velvet wrapped geodes, the potentials respond: suitors, thieves, inquisitors, friends. Choose a kettle. Fill it with water. Over the communion of tea, pray for the words to settle your debt.

Or maybe the body in sleep is a wind that knows everything we've never realized, yet any explanation is a confusion of words, for no matter how hard we try to recall what was floating to the surface while the dream was a tight knot inside of us – sentences lose their shape upon our awakening.

Forever New (with Tania Pryputniewicz)

Perhaps nothing is worth as much as what may replace it, when any given thing is only the first in a series of increasingly better things.  Tonight’s sunset changes as I watch – fiery oranges fade to soft pinks and purples; finally to black, with the first glittering hints of starlight shining through.

Or maybe what comes before haunts the now: great grandma’s in the nursing home tracing her great grandson’s palm with her good hand. You’ll have a long life, someday a wife. He’s nine, laughs, pulls his arm away. At visit’s end, she grips her chair to rise on legs she’s forgotten can no longer bear her weight, says she’d like to learn French, asks for sweet peas for her bedside vase.