poetry

  broke clean—one corner snapped away from the blue-black lacquered whole, a long slender triangle like a gymnast in three-quarter split exposing raw bone of ceramic. Your response, a heavy sigh, held more than what could have ever been plated … Read More

  1. You are wood, you are wool, you are the intricate skeleton of the desiccated leaf, of the dead dehydrated papyrus-bloom   2. you are simple as a scroll of cedar shaving   3. That’s neither here nor there. … Read More

  Snow falling outside means I can’t run from the knot in my jaw muscle, that root-deep twinge where my teeth meet their pained, swollen gum. I make bread and yogurt, anything to keep busy and away from the store. … Read More

  A Father   Now I’m as liberal as the next man but pink toys? A pale streak all over him. I was drinking draft beer. American as anything. It was the weekend. Something wasn’t right. I could feel my … Read More

  The plums rained down on us, then the fireworks. We ordered a package and we took out the trash. We had pulled weeds all season, sprayed aphids, we had done our duty if lazily. A friend visited for beer … Read More

  The blankness of the animal is profound or, no, a lack of blankness, a total   clarity of feature, her color particular and unnamable against   the snow whose bright coldness makes it blue. My aunt says, in   … Read More

  after R.S. Gwynn   She takes the hundredth call of the day before banging her toe on the table which happens more than she cares to say. She yelps—longs to curse but is unable. There are two men in … Read More

  a sculpture by Jim Dine   Following the map, I find them— a pair of enormous black hearts,   faces, hammers, crumpled cans emerging from the surface,   as if they’d been bubbling up from inside when everything hardened … Read More

  At one end, my tentacles are thicker than mainmasts, fine enough at the other to pen a too-sentimental plea in your captain’s log. If you release me and I don’t come back, there’s your answer. If you release me … Read More

  is the underworld, also a prefix to prefigure damnation atop of your noun: dislike, disquiet, distance— whatever’s apart and unlovingly weird. Down in Dis, sinners get whipped and greedy guys can never reach grapes. The boss either has a … Read More

  cats aren’t given names before experiments are concluded bc researchers are less likely to love nameless subjects.   this i understand. it remains true, even for those destined to acquire many names. the black-and-white was chosen   for her … Read More

  I wake up and brew the coffee And patiently wait for the gurgle, It’s like the last noise Rising off the wild boar the blood Hound smothered an Age ago.   I set the raspberries free. The knotted harvest … Read More