Emergency!
for Alexander Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease was the doctor’s primary diagnosis when, once a month, Danika materialized at the local ER, was stabilized with steroids and inhalers, and sent home. Chronic obnoxious monthly bills was the insurer’s prompt analysis when its own nurse reported, “Sure, she has COPD, but there is no reason for her to be in crisis every few weeks.” Unobtrusive exploratory talks by phone revealed to Christie, on the insurer’s outreach staff, that Danika was 76, lived alone, and went out little: “I get lonely … anxious. At the ER, they’re nice....
Read MoreStreets of Fall River
This city opens on the darkling west in granite and somnolence, the dawn behind it— sloping its tenements to the green bridge inviting Providence through Swansea, coughing itself awake, clearing an everyday blear with coffee and cream-cakes at the Terminal Bakery on South Main Street, a little before seven. It is freezing in February. The variety stores open clutching bundles of the Herald News, reshuffling their sundries down to the last can and candy bar you can find on the next block, too. These neat squares of Fall River, a hundred of them, same citadels beyond their second century...
Read MoreI Regret Grinder, but, No Remorse
I have no regret, no grinder of remorse, nor memory of the dental chair. I have no feeler of sins lost in sand dust with golden teeth, diamond over lay of lies. Do not dance, play checkers, between the lines of memory-black/white. I am a sinner wild with elbow muscle, flex right to left. Dental floss is my Jesus, purple robe, violent-victim. The cheeks of God whisper fools of toy tot decay, hanger on a cross-victim. I was an outcast of hell with flames hanging from my behind. What age of flowers is a whisper into the colors, fool enamel solid white. I wild elbows flex from right to left,...
Read MoreListenings
Moon rides in just over the crest of Creed Mountain and our words tremble in a sudden wind as the pines unlock their arms and remind of all the lost years. We made love here in our youth, discarded self after self to reach the single one each to each, hours falling away like used up rayons when the picture says finished. If there was a future to be met we didn’t see it, not then daylight or dark rain or sun. Only the pulse of the moment holding us as a mother might her brief children, warmth and breath all that matters. Now we wander here with eyes wary, unspoken thoughts casting ahead for...
Read MoreGreen Sonnets
Only green sonnets from this pen, beginning words from failure’s half-formed tongue, in a struggle to create, to sing within the time one’s finest words are sung. Not these letters that score the page, that stumble through and fumble back, that play this mindless game in quiet rage, not these, those golden words I lack. Maybe once, all lines had fallen true, somehow found their blistered place, only glimpsed a glimmer of that shine. Maybe once, I conjured words that flew, that saw the smiling of one musing face that fell so level, so clumsily blessed as...
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