written By Where our shore glimmers as waves overspill my body wakes plunged in a morning swim after sunrise removed the water’s chill. Like a jogger through pouring rain, I will tread water cold or not from limb to limb when our shore glimmers as waves overspill. Neighboring banks remain unclear until... Continue Reading →
written By All those roads all those forks. The ones taken the ones not. The ones we think we’ve chosen the ones we know were thrust on us. The what ifs and if onlys. I almost died at 16 and 17. I almost went on tour with the Cramps. I almost went to Tulane Law... Continue Reading →
written By I remember the soft pressure of Kim’s hand on mine, how she stood so upright, her petite frame sinuously curved, her brown, alert eyes meeting mine for the first time, acknowledging. She and her husband, Justin, were out doing lawn work that early spring day. They were my elderly mother’s new neighbors in... Continue Reading →
I sit in the park letting sun rays warm my back. Staring at the bright spring flowers, I think about all my plans and wonder if I should just forget them— After all, nothing compares to the Texas sunshine. I could stay here and just plant myself in the dirt, so that I too can... Continue Reading →
After Jarett Moseley Joshua hands me a lighter and shows me how to use it. We walk to the park by his house and watch trains stitch the ground intoa quilt. The river eats fish. We stand on the tracks until wind echoes our bones. Joshua says he loves to light piles of paper onfire... Continue Reading →
I’m lagging. I’m supposed to be with a group of little kids on a walk down to the river, but I don’t want to go. It’s a walk they always send us on when we come to the 4-H camp for one of the Iowa Quaker gatherings. An older cousin, Nancy, is leading the group... Continue Reading →
You drove, so I tried to describe them, witches dancing, opening their arms to the mountains, Sangre de Cristo. These trees have their own mission. Their bark is black and each limb has its own life to live. That’s what I said. You said ok, poet, they might be bigtooth maples Rio Grande cottonwoods or... Continue Reading →
I see pictures of you when you wore a girl’s body and it’s like you were in drag. I’m sorry it’s taken so long. In the most intimate days of my life I loved that body, its softness and folds, as I love you now: sideburns, Adam’s apple rumbling voice, far-blue eyes.
in morning light I load boxes onto a truck to be delivered to distribution centers far from here I do this fifty hours a week sometimes more at the same dock sweating and aching I don’t make the stuff I don’t see it in a store to me it’s all just a box I’m the... Continue Reading →
A friend died the same day another friend gave birth. I was all commiserations and congratulations, and the former were clichéd and prosaic and the latter forced and cursory. I don’t know whether sorry and happiness worked on one another to achieve some kind of insipid mean or if a poet, away from his writing... Continue Reading →
