Category: Poetry

The mother of all storms is upon us. We are taken aback, our skirts blow up. We show our panties, bad girls all of us, march off to school with our lunch boxes open. Do you want my apple? Do you want my pear? See all the fruit for the taking, piled hig … Continue Reading

A poem tells the heart: it must be true— unless perception is a lie and all considered feeling false; unless we err by saying, steal the essence of the said or bury it among the speechless dead. If by my lines I mean to raise, to stir awake, to show, i … Continue Reading

            In conversation with Rilke and Ocean Vuong What if getting old is traveling backward, regaining your first eyes, your portion of blood and bone no longer scaled with wound. Suppose you awake without your skin, all your senses felled by slee … Continue Reading

Stormy night: a pallid ant clings to slick fibers of a wind-flayed string. Too dumb to hope, too keen to despair, it pauses mid-string to interrogate the air with antennae restless with autonomy that try to amplify the ant’s economy of movement with el … Continue Reading

He is reaching around her – claw foot tub, oceanography. I could say islands, but instead – weigh stations, always this or that, always weather. She is wondering what it might be like to take a class at the University, what might have been the ending t … Continue Reading

The morning sulks with impending rain, held off for a moment when the sun bursts through— star-shell of anxious illumination. Here is that line of French infantry, their bayonets the bristles of unshaved chins, their eyes drawn, but of course, to your … Continue Reading

I love this green field! It’s forest green.               Never before have I seen such greenery. I love this green field! The deer feed heavily in this field. Turkeys are chasing each other around. I love this green field! The coyote watches the turke … Continue Reading

The presence of their square bodies large and uncommon in our small rooms half brothers same shoulders, jaw, hips, same lack of height forty years from boyhood 400 miles apart visiting back passing through our home for an hour pawing through the sepia … Continue Reading

Look at the lonely Zanate, pecking at his own enamored reflection in the dusty window of the room where I slept for seven days in the house of my lover’s wife.   Dear lover of poetry, farmer, family man; what happens when the lonely Zanate pecks t … Continue Reading

A terrible blessing – to be laid open to the bone, where the marrow trembles and sings with all the griefs, known and unknown, mine and yours. I have wanted a field where animals could graze, where I could lay down in the long grasses. If this careful … Continue Reading

Wind, a branch broken glass, but still cloud on the horizon where a line of people walk bent thick & thin, walk from what they left, but there is no where- they-are-going-to. One foot presses down, hurts or slips, weighs more than can be lifted. Th … Continue Reading

Emily – now I get it – no psychology here no diagnosis – no problem of the mind. It’s eggs and flour the call to rise – the call to write before the hemlock’s longest shade. We close the gate – latch the door plan a meal for two alone – melt the chocol … Continue Reading