poetry

  I’m not so barren, actually I’m waiting for a fire. Underneath me the immaculate aquifer where the rusted waters run iron-rich. There are no fish with holy gills. There are no toxic accidents. I am alone with my fullness. … Read More

  Around the shacks symphonies of grey in all its weathers;   stone, sea, sky. A scatter of plastic tables and chairs,   and faded Pepsi signs, the hum of people talking in the bar.   Somewhere behind me you … Read More

  On my walk I see in a matter of seconds an empty can of Arizona iced tea a dead black bird and a white man smiling at me from the driver’s seat of a passing car none of this … Read More

  Look here        at this cathedral arch I’ve wrought for us with beak and talon. Look at this shelter I’ve culled   from refuse and castaway plastics. See? I’ve painted its walls with berry juice. I’ve adorned its grounds with … Read More

  Which is to say dusk is approaching, as Pablo from Thessaloniki and Paige from Fox Chapel prepare to say their goodbyes. Pablo moving back to Cologne, which is a Latin word for colony. Paige back to Shadyside, which is … Read More

  the arrow piercing a metallic globe points to a concrete angel cradling a pot of incense while the rosemary grows wild and mint gives way to sage which sprawls like a body discovering a divan the collapsed trellis was … Read More

  I.   I’m the wave before it breaks the ground before it quakes the maelstrom before it hits the water before it boils the word before it forms.                       … Read More

  Hot, but with a breeze,     and the breeze carries something         faintly seen. Small glistenings   against the pines. It is the     day’s zenith, and the summer’s.         A … Read More

  Blue jay screams in the almost wilderness— she Wants she Wants she Wants.   Nothing but flames will grow in this wind.   Back and forth the blind mice scuttle. Their nation crumbles and thrives.

  For months I carried a bluebird. Its breath, dark berries. Its eyes were pebbles. In my pocket, its wings fluttered from time to time. Summer was not enough to sustain me. When I was sad, I took it out, dreamed … Read More

  [T]hey are so stored with meanings, with memories, that they have contracted so many famous marriages.” – Virginia Woolf, “Craftsmanship”   It really is, your suspicion notwithstanding, always like this. And you never really get over it. And the … Read More

  I’m drinking coffee with Melissa, telling her about an idea for a poem called The Encyclopedia of Small but Significant Gestures,   in which I explore the gesture of pressing my fingertips against my eyelids when I’m trying to … Read More