Watershed Review: 3 Poems

First published in Watershed Review, Spring 2026

Soft Power

Abe Lincoln’s coat
was embroidered with the words

One Country
One Destiny

large and meandering through the inner lining, 
interrupting the onyx silk with stitches 
like white picket fences. The bill 
of an eagle grasps the banderole.

Now airplanes are landing
on their backsides, slid upside down
onto an ice storm runway
just like the birds
these last months, with their chests to the sky
as if they’ve let go, plucked their own feathers,
forgotten that flight is a possibility.

Abe’s coat was kept
by the family of his favorite 
doorman. Relic-seekers and visitors 
were permitted to cut 
bloody squares from the places stained
by assassin spatter, to treasure the portions.

From the start 
it might have been a flimsy idea, a wrong
thing to try,
to hoist a huge alloyed body into the air
at great expense, corroded parts 
rattling, oppressive stench of jet fuel.

For a while it had wings though.
We started to crack through overhead barriers, 
broke into some formation.

But the ceiling we thought was falling
was only eggshell. We are fledgling 
where we cried eagle. We will fall
from familiar low branches, 
unless we remember 
how feather will always fly better 
than metal.

Ripples on the Tuolumne 

Forgive me (for not answering) my hands are wet, 
(my whole body is) sopping with river.

We are (fried eggs) here on a warm rock, or maybe we’re the lizard
who laid (the eggs). (Either way) we’re busy (eating, being eaten,)

incubating each summer minute, a flash in the sand, held 
(by our savoring skins) for as long as we can stand

the heat (of a mouth) that beams wide as its shore. (Brimming:)
our chatter, laughter, whoops (like loons) jounce from granite. 

The core of me is a round of yellow: runny, jammy, fetal. 
I am a(n) (adaptation, alteration) reversion to a time before (time). 

After (all, after) you’ve napped, face down on an ancient boulder
how could you ever (re)turn(?) to answering

any glass phone, any electric telegram hurled by that (bottomless) beast 
(I’s) blinking gnatty red (inbox, icons, impulse).

My email says OOO (for the foreseeable future). Me and my babes 
are growing grizzled, long, lithe and winding 

our ways (together), flooding each other’s banks, meandering 
through July. Our heads are full of gold.

While it’s all Ripping Apart

I stand at a corner 
holding my daughter’s 
hand, a miniature 
of mine, 
down to the nails.

Horses at the gate, we’re ready 
to break the curb once 
the crosswalk mitten stops 
pressing us back. When 
the bird starts singing 
and the green Go sprouts
a walking figure, we run,
allegro fingers 
across painted bars. 

A block down, 
on the other side we see 
a neighbor’s yard full 
of buds; raised fists 
flaring red from a riot
of green. Neighbor’s open face 
looks up at me, I ask 
for an introduction, 
“Pincushion protea,” 
they say, and I repeat it, we chant it
like the spell of a radical. 

I memorize 
its hopeful shape, plant it 
in the garden of my frontal lobe
by the window 
of my left eye
where we can see its sharp edges
shine. While everything 
else is hacked away 
by a dumb blade, millions of pins 
are sewing something new.