* Here, there, the way silence tows you below the waterline and though you are alone you’re not sure where her name is floating on the surface or what’s left grasped by a single wave that never makes it to shore splashes as if this pen is rowing you across the stillness…
Today I thought I saw an ex-love driving an old Mercedes with stinking exhaust. He had a beard and drove slowly as if he had no where to go, as if he wasn’t the younger man I held captive in my memory. Years ago, right there in the dark— we became birds standing on…
before I’m stricken down by overwhelming heartiness Lindo, remember my hands flagging down my elbows when I suddenly bent them at asymmetric angles and thrust them toward my second rib to cry out a phlegmy Milwaukee born Hrrrrraaghh! I’m stricken up like that often you know- I’ve watched you you flinch with a smile three…
The fire gnawed the grasslands to bone-cracked earth on the way to our village. We hoped the lake would save us, the buckets of life we hauled from the shore, the trenches of dirt we overturned, the drenched rooftops. We saw it writhing across the plane, rivers of light beneath rainless billows, bound for our…
what becomes you are breathing on the frozen ground with broken ribs you are smiling and we are higher up between venus and the crescent moon in the last seconds before first light we are falling we are praying are laughing at the idea of someone else’s pain are laughing in the tall…
Standing As Instructed My mother still under her sky-blue shroud, with her head turned to the side. I lie down beside her. With my face close to hers, hers unstirring, I take her face in my hands. Her cheeks, two peaches left on the ground after the frost, grow warm and her eyes…
