Small if

if

evelyn isn’t
here. i once
as a car horn
down the highway
bleating & evelyn
reminds everyone.
the last sentence i recall
saying to you is it’s still good
to get outside, isn’t it. it wasn’t
a question & i was
just then. evelyn in from the weather
brings a cold that undoes me, brick by brick.
i never knew becoming
less angry was lessening.
an eke at the edge of nightfall.
a careful fold of rain.

if

there are evelyns
elsewhere. i pluck
a chunk of melon
from pyrex as midnight
shifts in the reeds.
here’s how it might be: the beautiful
lungs of my father
devour air as they were
meant to. there was a time
in ireland when evelyn was
a botanist. worked
as a nurse. compiled names of dead &
flora. another evelyn is an opera singer.
throws her throat open & under
a deluge of sky
the field buckles.

if

evelyn is as much
like me. i sat across a table
from where she sat.
swallows noising in the cedars.
bodies are like that: blips
on the horizon. hands flit in
the mulberry bowl, bluing.
there are nits along the gals.
gulls. the sea’s gulp. what i miss
most about my upbringing
is a rustle in the next room.
or maybe it was green.
the sky unzips its hullabaloo. even evelyn
saw this coming.

if

only evelyn
at the doorsill
quiets the night.
in dark rooms
i grow loamy.
through a window the lamplight
wavers. evelyn could be
a daughter or a divvied moon.
my father would dream of eating
decadent meals he never did
while waking
when food turned
to the same silt in his mouth
when the night air lushes
lungs & clamors hither
could we ever
find time to be good
grief i keep myself
far from this
evelyn

if

evelyn is at a distance. she disappears

the hillside. we call it calamity

each daybreak.
in ireland evelyn
means longed-for. elsewhere island.
a biblical evelyn
is eve. unuttered
evelyn ebbs

at a shoreline
ringing
for hours.

Dear knowhow

the mountains withdraw unceasingly.

the day breaks in backstitches
until it’s january over my house.

i watch my father remember
he no longer remembers.

which is to say which is to say.

hours of wind chime
peal in his stomach.

dear i can’t stand

this wherewithal when
my heart hounds each day’s detail

every upwelling of forgotten
like finches falling over fruit
from my window

the sky slumps into a field
a daughter leaves her shadow
by the sky in the field
she leaves by