Calf Canyon: Poems

I am trying to tell my unborn daughter a story. It is an old story

that hangs on the spinneret tip of a spider's abdomen,

the spider's heart a bruise,

each chamber a stitch that nicks the copper blood

as it rushes through, each valve sighing out

like the hush that hung

lodged in everyone's lungs,

a silence stacked between plates on the drying rack,

a thrum that vibrated the blades of his kitchen knives.

With long-limbed free verse and highly textured prose, Calf Canyon builds an origin myth with...