POETRY

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
—Rita Dove
Snow Falls from Branches

Should have found a job by now; should have slept in the night;
should have boiled old coffee before noon.

Tea

my father holds
his favorite drink

Back Suplex

Gravel-scatted hell &
we were blessed to be able
to hold on for even a heartbeat

Going Broke

Winter sat like a wolf
on the horizon.

love poem with dead leaves & color

I would always rather be happy than
dignified. Rather held than held
in awe.

Good Driver

Lights on the dashboard spell out
“You still can’t kiss me”

On the Night Row-Houses Across the Street Catch Fire

You let the yellow glow
from eye sockets. The building up the street
is burning faster and faster.

“Artifact,” as Translated from Gluberhöff’s Lexicon

Any still figure at mid-late evening, when the long shadows make even crumbs appear arranged like furniture.

Clueless & Briefly Gorgeous

I buy too much, for someone of my stature.
could pawn a skinny metaphor to purchase a plump skin.
its reputed in our lineage— to daydream a life that shreds our pockets.

close up of sun
Mercury in Retrograde

You said it was okay to blame
what goes wrong on the planet

A Beautiful Thing

I want to roll in this moment until I become its vocabulary
until I smell like the bones
until I am its echo…

robertson quay

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?

[Zoetrope with Particulates in it and a Newborn]

and then her eyes fully opened — blazed through with strands of mud

Making Israeli Salad

Now that the Israeli has left, it falls
on me to make the salad.

heavy rain
The Plot

Long after midnight, we’re talking about our first time

Dear Deer in the Compost Pile

I tap at the alphabet while a single deer
taps at the dirt beyond the brush
on the far side of the tree line.

oh Manifesto

The collective
failure
of ethical standards

necromancer woman, witch woman

In my universe, my arm carries a heart and flowers,
my back a misguided quote

Mom, in Her Dementia, Steals Oranges

and apples, mackintosh mostly, but any kind left in The Pub
at the Assisted Living Place