poetry

  You know the story He became the rain Then a roaring fire Face impassive Flames licking warm & thick & ferocious The furl of his shirt in hot air The room glowed The walls cracked & fissured The ceiling … Read More

  is a convenience: we say fish don’t feel it. catch   a trout by its lip & leave a hook there, boil   a lobster alive & think steam, not   scream. lay a child’s head on concrete & … Read More

  two crows have landed on the roof of the applebee’s, so it must be   halloween. for crows are the spookiest bird & applebee’s is the spookiest place   & two is the spookiest number if you think about … Read More

  I used to have this job that was just an angle.   What was required of me was to not be toward it, not tilt my body in a certain direction and at a precise degree, and if I … Read More

  Having deep-cleaned the home of the reigning brand ambassador for a haute line of children’s books, I’d had enough of all those stories. Kids spinning back through history to be heroes, stamping out the start of a factory fire … Read More

  from Nora right before I left for work at Apollo, our college town’s carpet cleaning service. Twelve-hour days in the Midwest drought summer of 1988, sucking up dirt from wall to wall. I sold Scotchgard upgrades as often as … Read More

  —for Joey   Who knew we’d scramble out the rip of the ocean of home?   Your flailing limbs proving first is the worst. Who knew we’d subsist   as a rule? Morph into navigators of adulthood—me with a … Read More

  In my body it had grown, and then it slopped into a trough as the midwife heaved   like bringing in a dory. I barely felt it pass, workhorse of a vessel, the tug that coaxed out   the … Read More

  We are anchored in the stars —Larry Dossey, MD   Before I could grab nitrile gloves & drop the body in the garbage can a black triangle dive-bombed   the driveway— two wingmen & one flying point— pinched the … Read More

  —after Frost   If it were five years ago I was dying, who would it have been who cared? That one boy I could count on to board the train Sundays I bought apples from my father at the … Read More

  idol adorned with eyelashes, fingernails, other half-alive things. teeth & psalm, bitten and bless, so much bone. a song, a jewel, to divine like omen — how to begin this reckoning?   go to the river. mouth the shore. … Read More

  Part of childhood remains buried under sandcastles. You used to poach grasshoppers with an old hairnet until it caught strands of cobwebs and would not let go. Memories are but hearsay. So is a sachet that used to contain … Read More