She was dead before she died, how a serpent writhes
without its skull.

Euryale

Take me back to the car, lift me onto the hood. Listen          to paint creak.
            The deer are done watching. They are crepuscular,
                                       catatonic at this hour. 

The Playlist Reaches "At the Bottom of Everything" 

1966— my father sets a field on fire with his friend
or his friend's friend; with matches or a gun or cheap fireworks

sparking a thin corrosion, a sputtering
spine in the sky. 

Sounding Him Out 

The metal clink of her name 
against mine fills the small space 

and I think I could live in this quiet
forever. 


Sunday Dinner

At this party, they wore each other out and retreated
to refreshments. At this party, they each wore black.

She Tells You She Only Married Your Dad for Children 

An angleworm, a chicken, a fox 
in good health.

Things That Last to 15

There’s supposed to be resolution,
each good play: an outcome, an outro, an encore,
a side door to slip through once all’s said and done. 


Alternate Ending Where the Car Flips

there’s a child with love smeared around their mouth
there’s a woman named rachel or at least her hair is 

In the Old Photographs

So what
if I cry from happiness, cuteness
overload, if I curl in our blanket
with the Sunday scary despair
that I will die & you will die
& our old dog Annie will too?

When You Tell People I'm Sensitive, I Want to Kill You

You blew out forty candles and I already knew
your wish. My wish? To be under my covers, pink
and mauve, sorry head on my beat-up Pillow Pet 


The Table I'm Serving Asks Me To Sing 

It’s one of those days you wish there was less 
	at stake. The only worry: serving the large
Bianca to table four, straws to six. Hoping
the cute runner boy might escort you 
to the dumpster after close, maybe
	ask you to hitch a ride

Runner Boy

can you stamp / out the cinders / extinguish the spine / can you kill /


each light / jimmy the switch 	 the dead / outlet	     suspended 

The Body on Fire Inside Me 

My bed a park, loosened
with the shedding of our bodies.


Fresh Bedding 

Rabbits camouflage under pine needles.
Gophers gather in storm drains. Against the window,
the birds are petty. Rehashing old wounds.
A brown recluse braids her web in darkness
under the pipe-drip of a bathroom sink.

Creatures in the Last Hour

When mama brought us there, we’d sit in front
of the baboon exhibit, crack jokes
about their inflamed hineys, red
and puckered. Enclosed here and in the wild
baboons do not mate for life.

Atlanta Zoo, 1999

Five bucks to the hour. Five months surviving 
on day-old miso, bobbing cubes of raw tofu, seaweed
that stuck to my teeth. I broke a sweat, a rib, too-long eye
contact with a handsy busboy. Waiting

What Happens to Fish in the Tank After Closing Time? 

late in May we bobbed in Jacks’ boat
to the one house island,
breath as though our souls were reaching

The Edge of Maine

I think women in this family are
cursed. I’ve heard hisses in the sway of our hair. 


Hand-Me-Downs

Sickly-sweet fumes of funnel cake & kippered meat
coated in molasses penetrate the gauzy mask
of fog. A coyote sulks in the carpark.

Summers on the Mountain Town

I lover her passion, her healing, how
she loves everything and nothing
all at once. 

juliawatson

Selected work