my mother tells me about the symmetry of the roses on her own mother’s headstone how they hold within that ancient compressed animal her spirit — and in the end we are sitting on a bench in the garden I blunting the silence seeded between her and my childhood — the wind snapping the echinacea … Continue reading The Ending Is A Sharp Point To How I Was
In high school health class we measured our body fat percentages in front of our peers. I’ve passed out three times in my life. One of them was there. We were watching a Dr. Phil segment on anorexic teenagers in order to learn about the dangers of eating disorders. I misread emaciated as emancipated on … Continue reading Metaphysical Twitch
Set out to gather words like field flowers, vine ripe vocabulary hung low from crooked branches, and all too often, I’ve failed the harvest. Can’t compose from stocked shelves, would rather see those redwoods at the edge of flame, bright tulip fields bending in the wind, the apple branches laden with flowers, with bees, with … Continue reading On Writing
Clinging to a garden wall, I warn axes going up across the field to go dark, to burn far less. They have control of everything and really only answer to themselves. In a crazy manner, I crash into a crab harvest, shooting meteoric patterns of color over schoolroom windows. As the world loses doors with … Continue reading Sudden Illumination
I don’t have great expectations for the distant future. My woman keeps telling me that fifty years from now there won’t be an “us.” Just the usual engineering feats of tiny underground critters. So I’m making no plans for the 2060’s. Even if they come with their own summer of love. This afternoon is a … Continue reading Looking Ahead
On my day set aside for art, I painted the pearl crescent butterfly. I chose the male, not because I’m a misogynist, but its colors are brighter, more tailored to my palette. The one in my in-box was perfectly put together, with an alert head, eager antennae, and shapely wings, an inch wide. A coat … Continue reading A Gay Man In God’s Factory
Brother, we have grown apart. No more jumping on the beds. Then when your wife spoke of her troubles I saw your hands move, moths without flame, exactly as our father’s did while mother complained how it was too late to send the invitations. And his hands wrote out in the air an invitation. — … Continue reading Under Porch Light
The jigsaw puzzle had just been completed, all one thousand pieces of it, a few of the sections the paint worn thin from multiple uses and now in full display after many days, and many hands working to fit all the pieces together. This puzzle would remain on the table for a few days while … Continue reading Jigsaw Puzzles
Like rain-worn newspapers whose ink has leaked out, so does my soul as the words “you have relapsed” leave the lips of a finely-ironed coated man. The plans of hotel bookings, interviews and catacomb crawls crumble like last spring’s browning brittle petals, preparing for early March’s windstorms that will finally pluck them from their string-like … Continue reading Frail
same as any other spring the crow beaks drip red and a wishbone is bleaching on the window sill - it’s nothing like blood, I know that now. I am kept up early by the dry snap of branches and the deer collapsed on roadside lupines licking at their wounds. I’ve held a lot of … Continue reading A Study of Skeletons / A Cherry Tree Picked Clean