Into the dark and wide Des Moines I pour you, ashes fogging shallows. A moccasin in the rushes close by, Dark glisten, still as stone. Birdsong blesses the air, Bridge a silent acolyte. You rode ponies not far from here, Tamed litters of kittens, Wept leaving at summer’s end. Now you bloom again to the … Continue reading Home
Unless you’re counting those few days in January — and also that time in June. I want to hold out my hand to everyone who needs it. I know some good people who spent so much time in the dark, they became scared of the light. Holy are the things we put inside ourselves, always … Continue reading 365 Days Sober
Thin trees rise from the thick texture of the saw palmettos' sharp green leaves. Now I’m writing American sentences just off Grayton Beach. Tree-wood morphed into the shape of a lizard on the soft pine needles. My mother was born in fifty-one; next year she’d be seventy-two. I sometimes wake without dreams, uncertain if I … Continue reading Six American Sentences
New fantasy alert: I could become the vice president of institutional giving, wouldn’t that be nice? A new kind of life, the face of generosity associated with an association’s deep charitable pockets, the closest one can get to being a real-life Santa Claus, without exploiting elves and mass surveillance. I can see the highlight of … Continue reading Starting To Be Mr. Nice Guy
Like someone starts with a swarm of arrogant notions clenched solid at a single point on the earth, near a river or a road: Maybe the consciousness stream from the shadow who smokes his job through another thin roll? Could be the coral vine screeding up the fissured side of a brick wall over the … Continue reading Plots for a Fresco On Planned Obsolescence
Today is a shoe. The lace loosens and has to be tightened again and again. It’s tempting to knot it. The sole worn against the daily routine erupts letting a toe stick out. You wonder if you can walk around with your tongue’s tip lolling between your lips. The headlines: storms will embrace homes at … Continue reading Today
perhaps we could find ourselves ritualistically shifting our bodies alongside the banks of Lake Michigan colored the blackest blue I've ever known. perhaps your hand will find mine in darkness and the tense leaves will release a sound under the footsteps of our own solemn smiling dances as I look into your darting eyes the … Continue reading Nobody Has Time For Art, But We Make Art Anyways
You had no right to be the first to die. I was the older. You should not have rushed ahead of me. You knew the days were counting down when I called and you said, “I’m chilled, need my sweater, call you back.” And didn’t. I waited two more empty days, all the things I … Continue reading Sisters
My mind is still as a stone, so now, just to be on the safe side, I’m launching into a couple of quick rounds of practice sleep. You never know when you’re going to come up empty handed. Naturally, ice is a slippery thing, especially during foxhole season, so don’t wait a minute longer to … Continue reading The Red Boat
Once, when I was a child, my family dog picked up a kitten in its mouth, punctured a hole in its neck and it choked on its own blood. I think I cried for weeks. I think I tried to pry the dog’s jaws open. I think I came running into the kitchen, limp corpse … Continue reading A Conversation With My Therapist