Under Stars


1. In Her Sleep

What good was discovery
beneath a canopy of blame?
The truth returns to her
when she cannot cast it back,
flops like a fish.

Her companions, the unleashed agonies,
keep consequence alive, her story
inherited like fine goblets or guilt.
Some days, waking to the sheen of rain,
she is not even sorry.


2. In the Morning

If the sky stares back, the color of oysters,
she knows well the allure of a pearl
and curls into the shape of a shrimp.

If the sky is blue and a breath
blows through the gladiolas,
she can shake the night out of her hair.


3. In Line at the Market

Wealth is displayed in tins
and succulent arrays,
the cans of olive oil stacked
as though ready for a siege.

How easy it is to get dolmas,
peppers, olives without their pits.
Pandora eyes treasures in glass cases,
the soaking feta and foreign meats.

When she places her order,
a man with eyes like a fish
puts each of her delicacies
in its own little box.


4. Standing by the Sink

Her fingers plunge into the stream,
cold water rushing over knuckles and leeks.
The porcelain yawn of the sink is too white—
a stone where nothing grows.

Pandora has dragged her bag from the market,
filled with oranges, fennel, and greens.
The mint she can get from a pot by the porch.

Everything must be cleansed,
out in the placid daylight,
out in the basin's glare,
chilled by the faucet's providence.


5. In the Twilight

Always the color blue—
not robin's egg, but the murky shade
that settles on delta, mesa, ravine.

Pandora adores the archipelagos
scattered like jacks across ocean floors,
shimmering fish among the reefs,

as if the deepening world
were just her own worn-out body
turning between stars.


6. After Dark

She grows younger at night,
sloughs off the day's dreary hours
as though they were years
or the stars that fall from the sky
like apples shaken loose in a storm.

Meteors plunge across the dark
like words—whispered and then gone.
Under scattering lights,
Pandora thinks about breadcrumbs
from another old story,

a trail left in the treacherous woods,
children stranded beneath creaking trees,
their map devoured by birds.
Night has become a crow
pecking at bright motes.