The Mass in Latin.
The alphabet backwards
What the Beaufort Scale measures
Whether a baby’s cry is hunger or loneliness
The perfect recipe for chocolate fudge.
How to get ink out of silk
When a goodbye is final
How to French braid hair
Assemble a topknot in under three seconds. No bobby pins. None.
The real names of Lady Gaga and Cary Grant and Gopher on Love Boat
The chemical symbol for strontium
How to make a Brandy Alexander
Stop the bleeding
Paint a 50-foot high aluminum billboard.
How to draw a person’s profile using the numbers 1, 2, 3.
Make a slipknot, a bowline, an overhand knot. A lariat loop.
Say “Your lifejacket is under your seat” in Arabic.
“Come this way” in Vietnamese.
Ask me how I could possibly know
How to let you go
And survive to write another word.
A sequence of my poems has been published in a hardcover book entitled The Music of Leaving Poems by Tricia McCallum