Precautions
He changes his clothes before coming in the house—
gym shorts hanging on a peg in the garage.
Each day they are washed, like a sacrament to health,
a prayer that if we follow these motions, she shall
be saved. Then a hot shower, for any piggyback
bacteria clinging from surface to skin. The hands
are particular worries, how much they touch, how much
they carry. We bathe them in solutions, promises to kill
anything short of human. I always think of glitter,
how it seems to spread the more you try to wipe it up.
We know that one day our cradling her head, speaking
her name too close, will bring that one bad tiding
that calls her home. Even then, it was as if she were
untouchable, separate, kept from us by six feet of dirt.
Recent Publications:
- Contrary: Fern at the St. Louis Children’s Hospital and With Kit, Age 7, Outside the Hospital
- Shenandoah: Secret
- Earth and Altar: Prayer Chain
- Up the Staircase: Heart Mom
- Fathom Magazine: Laura Ingalls in My Prairie Town
- Christian Century: Burial Song
- Chronically Lit: Putting Out What You Might Put Away
- Summerset Review: Precautions
- Apple Valley Review: Persistence and Kathleen’s Heart
- Cumberland River Review: To Julian of Norwich and Mary Ann Lyth and Mary Calvert
- 2River: “When my third daughter is born brown-eyed….” and “‘She’ll See Things Before They Happen'”
- Windhover: “Anne Hutchinson”
- Altarwork: “Revival Widow”
- Gravel: “Hannah More, the First Sunday School Lady”
- Dappled Things: “Saint Teresa of Avila”
- The Cresset: “Turning Thirty“
- Verse Daily: “What to Leave Behind“
- Mothers Always Write: “Rain Came Fast“, “Literary Mama”, “Nightfeeding“
- One: “Ruth’s Mother Replies“
- Lunch Ticket: “To Hildegarde“
- Foliate Oak: “The Maidservants,” “Boaz Watching Ruth in the Fields,” “Threshing Floor”
- Perspectives Journal (September/October 2015): “Consumed”, “Ruth Pregnant“
- Christian Century (August 2015): “Naomi’s Famine,” “Ruth’s Vow,” “Naomi’s Sojourn”
- Cumberland River Review (Summer 2015): “Tabernacle“
- Appalachian Heritage (June 2015): “Nests”
- Apple Valley Review (April 2015): “Return to Your Mother’s House”
- 236 (2015): “I Take the Scissors to the Double-Stroller” and “Snowmaggedon“
- Red Paint Hill (2014): “Dream with Eight Legs“
- Tinderbox Poetry Journal (June 2014): “Kikimora Looks for Love” and “The Wandering Witch”
- Cider Press Review: “Ascension“
- Sweet (Spring 2013): “Magnolia” and “My Husband Tells Me…“
- storySouth (Spring 2013): “Housework“
- Literary Mama (January 2013): “the terror is in the way it holds you”
- Stirring (Fall 2012): “It Is Well“
- 32 Poems (Fall 2012): “What to Wear“
-essays-
“Mother-Woman”
– Ruminate
“A Poetry Book, a
Notebook, and an Apron”, Mothers Always Writes
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