in davis at the ceramics conference
on the Easter Bunny’s lap
a polaroid of my heavy bangs
smiles and my mother swears
I loved that bunny so much
I wouldn’t leave the store
to visit another gallery or
slip cast demo, one year I ask
if she will make a set of bangles out
of paper clay but she never does
because my father hid
the emersion blender he bought
her for Christmas to mix shredded
paper into porcelain, and he never
found it among the mess of wings
and noses in the attic, their students
always sculpting
rabbits, another year in a gallery
I find a perfect pink donut sprinkled
white and wish more than anything
it were real.
Sunset Beach
I’m flying on the beach, my father tells me
on days the wind beats his tiny planes
into shallow banks of seaweed
he sits to watch the waves, a double-crested
cormorant spreads her pterodactyl wings
hovering
the raven sea;
I’ve never seen a bird that hasn’t made
me want to live.
