Louise Bourgeois, “Lullaby” (detail) (2006), series of 25 screenprints on fabric, installation view at the Museum of Modern Art (photo by Elisa Wouk Almino/Hyperallergic)
Esther or Not
To be under a wave
of white sod
half stars half flowers
Beauregard
When I play tennis
I’m a menace
Lid on Mars
To make meaning
in the open mode
operate the
sentence switch
Post No Bills
Maybe if I throw
more bread down
the birds will come
There Is Nothing to Save
Man was inconsistent
for an animal
One door opened
and daycare fell out and
I’d prefer if someone
took this cup away from
me
When Flashing Help Is on the Way
I could have called
this “Forest Ethics”
Friday Morning FiDi
Sometimes I imagine
everyone leaving
Walgreen’s is
buying Plan B
Awful Museum
Hair as time
Sea Call Farm
We climb the hill from our panic years ago
Microclimates of Grief
I got you a cake
Go fuck yourself
Another Green World
To have instead the stars the
weather acquits some trees
you said “for your sake” and I
preserved the worst discrepancies
* * *
Amanda Nadelberg is the author of three books of poetry, most recently, Songs from a Mountain (Coffee House, 2016). She lives in Oakland.
