Later, the birds would find what I’d planted in crooked bins before it could die of thirst. That’s the thing about birds. I put out a feeder, and they littered my balcony with seeds, squabbled like downstairs neighbors come the first. The little ones drove off the pretty ones. I was happy just to watch and pretend I was mayor of Feather Town, but I was more like the janitor. I saw a woman walking in long squares around the parking lot every day, fists up. I wanted to tell her no one …

passion-forged flowers amongst midnight skies1 – fire lookouts press onto rock tips2 – stones imitate fervent postures3 – rose-curved bellies hold back unchaste4 – horns rip sheets while sleeping5 – fingertips graze in the middle of night.6 1 Should we pluck – 2 Should we prepare – 3 Should we negotiate – 4 Should we vault – 5 Should we lock – 6 Should we confess – Laura Titzer is an avid tea drinker, hiker, rummaging cyclist, poetry/nonfiction writer and facilitator of …

That silver dawn bears no weight, its last wooly leaves are fire coral sunk to the bottom of the branch worn bare. Night coming early bears no weight—at five p.m. the day shuts closed like a clam’s stony mouth. My daughter calls for me, and I begin to weave the narrative of motherhood: the matted wool woven around our ankles, an ancient’s net tied to the bed for an oyster’s life span. This is not only metaphor. My daughter calls for me from her bed, her voice an unworn splinter, an …

Stonewash sky, distressed denim gulf, each palm tree sensuously distinct as the organs of lovers, this bulge, that angle, I admire each one as if I could commit the entire grove to memory. Over the dunes, waxy myrtle crackles with songbird, yellow goldfinch resting after a thousand miles. A heron startles. I’m tired after a mile of carrying this child on sand. No shade among these pines and palms. Tornado warnings, gulls far away. I lean into the salted wet curls of my last baby and heave my …

A pipe bursts and the floor buckles, wedging her office door half-shut; because I am small and can weave the gap, my mother sends me to retrieve her records. I read each name aloud and, when she says yes, pass her a blue folder. We run through the alphabet, stumbling twice on the deceased, more frequently on the misfiled. I must decipher handwritten names, then forget them as we go. You can do this with sounds— let them float along—if no story is attached; you learn not to know or …

An ocean runs in reverse into the eyes of those who wept it. in the sound of their restless flow, mockingbirds ask us, speaking the language of loss, what worth it was trading life for shadows, cinder— why we let thousands die then, hold a séance as if we have no shame, no guilt asking for rain from those whose teeth have become ploughshares. Our fathers planted trees, but we fell them to park our self- drive cars— trees whose leaves were letters of appeal delivered, but always unread, …