poetry

  Morning—it’s burning in my thighs already, and I climb a steep green crest then let my burden carry me on down its slope, this summer when I’ll have no rest. Northern Colorado, somewhere between Windsor and Loveland, wind fractions … Read More

  The outcomes of our love lie in their bed, sleep-tangled and yeast-warm from the guitar. The stars overwhelm their dome, the mangroves drip their branches down into roots and thus over years walk the earth. You & I have … Read More

  In the dream You don’t share Your number Or have you And have I Forgotten Who you are So I trouble Every door And some open Upon couples caught Red-handed Others remain Adamantly Secured The eternal Hotel requires Masks … Read More

  Two-and-a-half years later, she buried my premature sister. Poor mother lives in two worlds of letting go and letting go, of one she can find and another she can’t.

  Propped on an assault shotgun gun my liquor gun my grass-fed cold-smoked ribeye   I drink single-batch bourbon how sudden is my skull tell me   (after Archilochus)

  And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him. —Luke 23:33   Diffuse light, no real season. Soldiers everywhere, an occupying army. A leveling goes on, a minutely figural confusion. The central … Read More

  I was another story.   Nothing awarded with ribbons or scrapbooks, nothing to please the eye.   I grew but never did I thrive.   Instead I was stealth and envy, all what if ? and why not?   … Read More

  Between the four walls of fable and four shelves of forgotten books,   back of stairs that double back to earth, above the grimed arc of the kitchen,   though not above argument, a need of new alignments.   … Read More

  At first, immunizations & cherry lollipops. Scales, stethoscopes, Disposable bedding. Formica & triage rooms. The delayed ache Of epidurals & birth. Latex gloves. Barium. The occasional mistaken Stone & sludge. Operations & all the risks of being opened up: … Read More

  The first time I met my new family I lit a match in the bathroom. I wanted to make a flame. It was an accident. Downstairs the strangers ate and drank. It spread, from my hand to the toilet … Read More

  Buoyant on hummingbird wings; Julien guides the eye of the drone. From afar, the top of the lighthouse looks like a lunar module— fire on re-entry, glass cracked and fumed. Down here on Litløy, I scrape moss with a … Read More

  Big old heron fishes midstream, wading as through a time slower than the Susquehanna’s hours upon years upon stone, so when he flies I almost panic after all this time in the shallows,   colors floating by, Canada geese … Read More