Lunar New Year, and every time I write or read / the phrase “fire horse,” I see “fire hose.” / I wonder what the year will bring, / its chronic inflammation and bright / tendency to self-immolate

Dad is fishing behind me, a memory clipped / right out of the scrapbook of girlhood. / Flicking a small fly: in out in out in out.

Louisiana dog and her snow-sweater, her stretch-marked heart, far / removed from the days of filling belly with grass to stave the hunger

The weight of the world feels so heavy today but I’m standing on the shore of Lake Michigan and the sun is out for the first time in days. I walk past people sitting in their cars, pointing them toward the setting sun, windshields tinted orange.

The sun floats down a half inch. We are in love, on a walk. / As we cross the parking lot for unlucky students, you ask me / what my ideal world would look like if the good guys won.

I’m drenched in the wetness of the cool air, my glasses streaked from the remnants of the rain spitting at me before I got in the river.

It is empty here, by the bay, cold and still and dusted white with snow. But I hear you on the wind before my eyes land on your cracked shore, soaked in algae.