Category: Poetry

Wearing a smile the photographer chose in your yearbook picture and the wistful faux-fencepost-leaning pose in your yearbook picture. An old barn, a covered bridge, and a hickory with a rope swing: quaint country backdrop complete with scarecrows in yo … Continue Reading

We are working in boxes stacked up on wire, pulling our eyes closer together. I’m writing you to confess to my failures as I brew in the cracked tea pot on the window sill, Teetering between the snow and a steamy room with two moon faces. Let’s have a … Continue Reading

I have missed a lot of boats. Most of them I saw clearly only when I looked behind me. Boats I coulda, shoulda, woulda boarded and sailed away to some place happier than here. But I have only this boat. This houseboat, this beat up leaky canoe, this so … Continue Reading

                                                    for Arlo The black night of old constellations has not yet thought to open its eyes. You are tucked in your car seat, bundled against the pre-dawn cold. In the glow of the dome light, I lean close to … Continue Reading

The click, click of old Irish gold and wedding ring passed from nurse to hand, after a tug over a knuckle cracked and rooted in the past like an old ground stump.   Across the dance floor, at the Heidelberg bar, after a stranger’s slap to the ass … Continue Reading

Silence. Smooth, glassy reflection. Ripples Peace. Wind Whispers darting back and forth Be quiet, careful. Suddenly A thunderous crash As a watery hand slaps the surface of the beach, Sand soaring in all directions Tumbling Scuttling Swept out to sea. … Continue Reading

He had been in a hell of a fight like being kicked twenty times in the head. Of course, he would know, like that time coming out of Driscoll’s, fighting those three guys from the flats, the tall one saying, This stupid shit won’t stay down. But they ju … Continue Reading

Not to bless, but desiccate instead the hot spit on lips shaping hate suddenly at center. The confused backing away, backs now together wanting a blessing on pins & posts, the placards & uncertain plans, questions, answers, the demands. Yes, a … Continue Reading

It is hard to walk into the VA. President’s face, larger than life and the VA secretaries smiling blandly. The American flag proudly centered. A wall full of pamphlets from every group. Smiling joyful face at the desk, a new one, again, (one face laste … Continue Reading

The more you shared memories that broke off inside you, the longer I stayed every time you hit me. At nineteen, I thought that was love. Soldier-you smoked opium to forget boys, whose high-pitched voices chimed about promises of bikes, rice above ratio … Continue Reading

The cousin of aleph and ayan and name and creation, A for the apple, on the branch in the garden The one you know well, with the snake and the tree. A for forgetting, as in Alzheimers, aphasia, and anonymously me.   Believe me, it’s true: In the b … Continue Reading

Book-skimming is a bit like brushing fingertips across the face of the ocean. You caress a page and probe no deeper. Turn to the art tomes when words go from chime-clear to brassy. By the window of the bookhaven perches the kind of woman you don’t ask … Continue Reading