Star Slinger
Knowing others plot
and await your surrender,
knowing if you do surrender,
they may kill you anyway—
that kind of knowing
is not my country.
Category / Poetry
I Learn to Appreciate Soft Butter on Our Vacation
Being brave in rain is not easy. When it stops
I find an outdoor cafe near the hospital.
Running back & forth to see you
hooked up to beeping buzzing machines
is a heft of stone in my chest.
Clocking Out
The metal gray time-clock
seemed to monitor every movement.
Its glassy face never blinked
as it belled interruptions through the day.
Accident
I count concrete squares on the way
to school like a gambler counting cards.
Tree roots nudge up the sidewalk.
Step on a crack, break your mother’s back.
I leap at the cross-piece on the power pole,
Continue reading… "Accident"Threshold
on sidewalks slick with rotting leaves
we wait for a freight train to pass
don’t oversleep
we will meet in the middle
of an empty room
in a town of hard shadows
windshield glare and drooping vines
“Take your broken heart and make it into art” — Carrie Fisher
Make wallpaper of your greatest losses,
the smallest saved to decoupage
a Pandora-proof box
Sew a quilt from a sundress
tattered at the hem like a failed affair
or the first pair of shorts you ever bled through
Call to Wake
he crack of dawn is a dark rinse,
humidity descending, night lifting,
bird band rattling while the lead sings
a long note and the counterpoint chirps
witchy witchy witchy witchy witchy
Tidal Shift
A childhood spent evading his lumbering
footsteps. His eyes in the recliner
every evening, awaiting
any wrong movement—his ears
listening for some crude thought to escape my mouth.
Riding an Ebike at Seventy
With pedal assist and a throttle,
the hills sit lower and shorter.
I ride farther and bolder than I ever did.
Through the workhouse of the world
I visually dance, and the air parts
as I pass, not as gauntlet but
honor guard in a Tour de France.
Heavy Thunder, Real Rain
I know this face and which dog is mine.
I’m looking out my window,
the one that holds this morning,
its slanting sun, rain storms, snow.
I’m looking out that window
It’s Saturday morning, beyond the glass