He could be like a murder victim on his side, the way he sleeps. The arms flailing, the legs cocked weird. Like a deer on the side of the highway. The dead are like that, caught in a sudden peace…. Read More ›
writing
A roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour
It is a sleepy Sunday with the cat in the window, the clock ticking and the rain. Me smacking my lips, tonguing my teeth as a lion might a sinew. House cats are no different than their counterparts in the… Read More ›
Magna come loudly, Bill
I guess the window on William closed a long time ago, I’ve just gone by Bill. Been called Billy, but only to distinguish myself from the other Bills. A littler Bill, that Billy: a smaller version of his dad. Though… Read More ›
Physical education
In grade school PE we were forced to do chin-ups in front of the rest of the class and some boys could barely do one, and were laughed at and teased, called pussies and worse. But there were others, quiet… Read More ›
The passing through
Poem you come out unformed as me, with no bones you plop onto the ground eyeless and bare, hardly alive. And what is form, but a language others assign to us for filing purposes? And what are we beyond our… Read More ›
Sisyphus in the underworld of our kitchen
It’s true, the microwave is sticky. Sticky on the insides, sticky when the door opens. And there’s hair on the kitchen cupboards, hair adhered to grease. Animal hair, but it doesn’t belong there. And mold on the insides of the… Read More ›
What it takes to look like a poet
There is nothing ordinary or light about you. You don’t look into the camera, you look down or sideways. You do that because the weight is too much for anyone to bear, the weight of your gaze. You know that,… Read More ›
Postcard from the Mediterranean
I go back to the curves of that sea along the beach, shapely as a woman’s hips. To the dark, side street bars and waving aloe stalks, the persistence of salt in the maritime air.
Song for Billy Collins
All night while we sleep in the dark of the kitchen by the sink the coffee tumbler stands on its head upside down like a yoga pose in the drying rack beside the Belgian beer glass, the salad spinner, the… Read More ›
Cloud Atlas for Dummies
A dramatic spring sky where the clouds take on exotic shapes, this one taking me back to grade school when I first learned about plate tectonics, the idea our earth was once supercontinents that broke apart, that you could fit… Read More ›
