Read an Excerpt
First Love
for Kevin Opstedal
I’ve never lived in New York
but I died there once while
visiting. Those empty river bed, organ
blues (whose chords I never knew)
if the poems are dated surely
she is charting a breakthrough, “large
black butterflies like birds” and “the
sun is a star” a form of trust plus
reintroduction to the act, dead heat
and playing it off, killing time
in Isle de Mujeres…of quickly
drawn and dispelled passage, the shadow
of the board behind the door
I signed once as Miss Crane,
once as Miss Valdez, jerked awake
the Atlantic Ocean had died and
folded headlong—disappeared
