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 →
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 →
I’ve been down a roadwith wheat stacked on both sides,so I thank God for the scattered hillsand the small town wedged between them.Not that I don’t appreciate the country’sflat and endless bread-basket,but a slow rise does my concentration a favor,and civilization grants my wish.I can sit up at a diner counterand order a stacked BLT,as... Continue Reading →
"The man in the next bed died last night,"are the first words out of Ted’s mouth."And the guy in the next room early this morning."To Ted, it's more like a funeral home than a hospitalexcept, in this ward, the undertakers get the corpses prematurely.He has no doubt that he'll be nextdespite the medical staff’s comforting... Continue Reading →
White Impala parked on a side street,blue Chevy Malibu at a drive-in theater –the images are as useless asa box of condoms to a dead man.But here they comeout of the sheer endlessness of the past,meet up with me in this cageI call the present.Sure, I’m driving, but I’m not cruising.I’m headed some placeand I... Continue Reading →
So this is what waiting is all about,pacing before the temple,pretending comfort on the concrete steps,admiring the marble tripod,the entrance flanking sphinx.I look at my watchand then the limestone monoliths.I feel my pulse,run my hands across the huge bronze door.After a while, I know my entablaturefrom my column base.It's growing darker by the minute.My eyes... Continue Reading →
Your hand can really wrap around a cup and tighten.Be thankful it's not your throat.Long after you've drunk its contents,you feel for insight in its smooth china surface,beyond its current shape back to manufacture,prototype, planning, even its ingredientsdeep in the earth.When the skin below your eye is bruised,you're out to feel the hurt in everything.How... Continue Reading →
The first line would always be frozen pizza.The second would read two gallons of milk,one box of raisin bran.The third would be yogurt, one fruity, one plain.The fourth, instant soup cartons – just add water.The fifth – apples, the cheaper the better.The sixth – cookies. The seventh – eggs.As for the eighth, it’d be a... Continue Reading →
The lot’s not really vacant.Weeds grow aplenty.And so does broken glass.And empty syringes.And used condoms.There was even a dead bodyfound here once.A homeless guywho froze to deathone bitter cold January.He stumbled into hereafter dark.He heard there was a vacancy.He heard wrong. More from this Author Read More in Poetry
Two weeks before,a raven penguin-walked slowlyalong the trail in front of Jane.clutching a broken wing at its side.In exhaustion, it finally fell.Above, others of the flock cawed loudly.If this creature dies, she wondered,would these silk-black carrion-fancierseat their own.In fading light, Jane wrapped itin her backpack, bore it home.When we walk her good-will farmof pens and... Continue Reading →
