English Made Easy

foretell endings so forlorn—derelict sprinkler head, yawning garage door

was safely housed, immunized against sadness.

“Sounds like someone’s been celebrating early.”

whose wife was killed after kids dropped rocks from a highway overpass onto the windshield of her car.

So grave and frivolous

Lena stared at the cross pendant nestled reverently in the babysitter’s tidy cleavage

listens to the hollow, bone-like tock of bamboo chimes nearby. It’s a mournful, an awful sound to broadcast through a neighborhood

chafed and intricately mottled

exquisitely benign dementia