Ever since I hit puberty/ the moths visit me at the threshold/ of every summer…

Recess is over. The sun’s out,/ but I’ll shepherd them inside,/ close read a high modernist/ whose poems none of us likes…

There are / no snowmen / in the desert / where life is / seldom frozen ...

but you can call me pill bug / sow bug / cellar bug / even though I’m not a bug / but a perfect circle / from the sea…”

“Why do I always seem to return to the sea? / Every time I pick up my pen, salt water pours out, soaks the page…”

“In northern Maine, on the U.S.-Canadian border, lies the lake where my family went every summer—East Grand, it’s called, and aptly so…”

The imu loa sent smoke skyward as Cook’s body steamed. Hands once used to grip musket and cutlass belong to me, ali’i Kamehameha…

“I’m thinking of the word nurture, how it’s so often placed in opposition to nature, with versus their slippery hinge. But that has always felt wrong to me…”