Driving west in the global north,
endlessly heading downhill.
Down, down to the flat bottomlands,
rich with place names designed to be aspirational –
Elyria, Avalon –
where trailers sprout like chickweed
among the corn.
if we’ve left pieces of ourselves boarding the train to
places that never stuck
how long until we forget how it felt
to hold that ticket
What a nice looking young lady coming up the street Is his reaction as he sees out the window by his desk A girl make her way across his view, two stories down. Am I being patronizing, he wonders, to label her so? Or...
Read More“But her husband, I’ve no use for him at all,” Mother stated
When I was eleven and instantly I wanted to step
To the side of that imagined clown with his horrid cigar
And you? Will you go back to the coves and short notes, the fruit seasons?
Ask another Phoebe or Niki how deeply they loved and lost extravagantly?
I started with pencil, as I assumed artists, like writers, did, scaling down the magnificent to a smallness greater than myself.
Read MoreDon’t know
how I ambled
down narrow basement steps
moon smiling over the Rockies
to pray
Hudak is missing. He disappeared one day in the middle of English Literature 201, and I haven’t seen him since. But that was four years and two failed colleges ago.
Read MoreThe night I almost killed my grandfather, I was trying to be funny and earn a position as a funny guy, like him.
Read MoreHer hair cascades
from a slim barrette,
her smoke dancing
to the ache of a minor key.
Your thousand secret selves
live in this room,
hidden in plain sight:
She wanted you to look at things: a pile-up of clouds,
Sunset transmutations, ribs of boat-like magnolia leaves,
Intricacies or simplicities of shells, almost weightless
Outgrown June-bug bodies. Nature, in short.
Anything outside ourselves.
