when I swerved to avoid the roadkill (a fox? maybe a young coyote?) on that nameless landlocked highway we were drinking different sodas she was probably talking about how it’s ingrained in people’s minds to like summer & how when she was younger she’d snort Adderall on the neighbors’ veranda while reading their National Geographics... Continue Reading →
spills like tidewaterover rockweedand black stoneetching absenceinto their edges. it salts the skin,wears through bone,ferries memories ashoreto settle in dune grass,half-buried,stirred by wind,vanishing. not lost,but scattered.
Frost arrives without apology.The pine stands as sentinel.No bloom,no color left to lose.It asks for nothing,draws no gaze. Snow gathers where it pleases,a white cloaklaid across the sleepy earth. Branches arch;a quiet bridge between seasons,outstretched fingersbearing winter’s weight. Sparrows live through cold still,each a small note held in the hush.No pleading,no display. Even dusk passes... Continue Reading →
I still search on the bookshelf as if retrieving a lost child, a missing parent with just the right spell. How grateful I am you are still standing, though I might find you elsewhere, on some screen. I long to see your face and feel your spine, some proof that all my fermented sorrows have... Continue Reading →
After seventy-three rejections, one for each day of summer gone by, I know what the phrase means— the absence of a human voice. But to me it’s as comforting as a Philip Glass movement, as maddening as the cricket that keeps my seven-year-old awake, hidden in the rose bush, giving us nothing but unanswered envy.
Nothing morethan a glimpseof another white-belliedcooper hawk at rest along the interstate,or a no-traffic evening,that feel of heading homeas if nothing (else)had ever happened. Oh forgiveness,& understanding. Let us say grace. Let uscall it that. Now, together. Read More in Poetry...
The vibrancy in that small cafeall of us concerned mostlyabout breakfast. Around the corner wide sky for milesthe land, yellow-brown and hardand being city folk from the suburbs we were silenced. We spotted the familiar from the road.Coneflowers, wild sage,cheatgrass.Saw black-chinned hummingbirds, and a skylineof sandstone cliff shadowshuddledas if in conversation, prayer,or... Continue Reading →
Under the triple-laned lit up turnpike overpass,sharp-tipped weedsreach through weathered rocks, as if unawareof how hard someonetried to stop them. There is growth under everythingyou’ve driven past,another WaWa, that bagel shop,the Costco station open at 6AM. Familiar curls of highway gleam in the pre-dawn,and on the radio,a slow jazz movementafter the newswith promisesthat an upcoming interviewwill offer a glimpseinto a better way. At the traffic... Continue Reading →
each saguaro pillar in this bare-but-full, sparse-but-ample hill-side forest is a bone in a body i didn’t know i had. whispers surround me, their austere guardian presence like tribal elders confessing crested wisdom—the tangled gift & barbed curse of knowledge, & it’s the same as when the wind gushes her secrets to the border collie... Continue Reading →
With fallcomes deathin the form of brown leavesloving the wind for a final time.These pastoral morningsbuilt of red and orange diorama sidewalks,and bright black reflecting puddlesof clogged storm drainsgurgling at passersby.Afternoons ofwalking hand in hand,the only ovento keep fingers warm.These are the early nightsof rainy applause, hissing, and staticcombing through the tangled marigold stalksas we... Continue Reading →
