Where is the poem that can carry me? I want to be useful as a pulley tied to a tree on a bluff, yet delicate as leaves floating. Where is the poem that touches the bottom of the sea, finds Atlantis? Stopped by the albatross,...
Read MoreMy mother’s moods could swing on a dime. She did temp jobs for a living, most of them rarely lasting more than a week. Nana, my grandma, never really told me the whole story about Mom. She’d just say: “Your mother, she has...
Read MoreBarefoot young girls rejoice like soft spring emissaries curling grass blades between toes singing lamplight songs from dawn till dusk, voices leading a forest chorale. spotted fawns frolic stags rub velvet from antlers does...
Read MoreI. There’s a musty smell inside the shell. Rusty nails and splinters. I can’t begin to count the bugs. Right now, I see a spider. II. A clown car heading for a cliff. Leaking fluids. Spewing fumes. Panic. Fury, Engine fire. Big...
Read MoreToys drown in the shallow end. The quest for more chlorine. Someone slips a cannonball. Another balks a dive. I’m on the ladder next in line Wet feet. Dry throat and pounding heart— my sea legs turned to gooseflesh. Frank...
Read MoreWe were lost on the way, gathered in a garden, all microcosmic in the sense that a place can mean almost everything and still just be a place. Perched on a cliff, yet rooted. At the center, music, fleeting presence in what is...
Read MoreWhile rummaging through the hallway closet today, I found an old photo album. I flipped through the pages, but stopped at one particular picture from 1943 that entranced me. I stared and stared, as if looking at it for a long...
Read MoreIf I happened to be visiting Mom on laundry day, I would carry the basket of wet clothes outside and hang them on the line for her. On this particular day in mid-June, blazingly bright sun revealed rust on the lines, rust...
Read MoreMy sleep is tenuous, thin as impossibility, so I lumber from bed, balance footing, fumble into the dining room, and slump into my recliner. I don’t turn on a lamp. Dark enfolds me the way I need to be held at 5:40 a m.,...
Read MoreAn unexpected occurrence happened when I was in the sixth grade at Reeb Avenue Elementary School. The Bell had rung to begin class, and we students, seated and waiting, expected our teacher to appear any second as usual....
Read MoreYet, it keeps resurfacing in various ways, our love, our hammered love, inching up for years. I’ve tried not to adore her deeply, to quit her, but I’ve failed. My slobbering heart holds right a fire of flattery, blood pressure...
Read MoreIn the world of my childhood Mother was not there. The doctors said unexplainable things rattled in her mind, so they took her away to a hospital, an institution determined to reconstruct the sticks and stones, the shields and...
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