I Try to Forgive Your Absence, Facing the Snake in the Kitchen
I mistake it for a night crawler, which recalls my father forcing one into jumpy nine-year-old palms so that I can ruche its long succulence onto a hook. But this one, the color of giblets, spans two checkerboard tiles and looks stunned, as I am: How’d I end up here? A whiplash tongue tastes the air. No Brother Francis, I swallow fear and loathing, seize Tupperware, and then, stifling dry heaves (En garde!) poise bin over reptile—which thrashes into spitfire life, sidewinding into the living room, all snap and writhe. A montage of past insults replays the Why me? refrain: A...
Read MoreThe Briar Speaks
Her curse was our period of glory. Everything became so quiet—no galling chatter of humans, no jarring barks of dogs, not even the buzz of a fly. Only the subtle hum of our parents—sky and earth, stretching our verdant vines, plush flowers, and ...
Read MoreThe Muse of Monterey
I make no excuses for my Muse who resides in Zodiac’s centrifugal eye. She spies on me through fog-shrouded shadows at night. My Muse on leave from her usual station beside Santa Rosalia, guardian of Monterey. She waits tables at the waterfront nightclub at a spot where I’m often asked to snap photos on iPhones for tourists from faraway lands. My Muse has a special talent for delighting customers who circumnavigate the place, and is envied by many who amplify her cheer as they quaff frosty glasses of imported...
Read MoreIn the Desert of My Mind
I am cactus without flower, camel without hump, oasis without water. I am absence of wishes and desire to wander deeper into monotonous dunes. I am independent grain, drifting in wind, hoping I will find friction, fuse into reflective solid, shine as blue of my eye becomes mirror to anonymous seekers of the...
Read MoreBorder Country
Black jack hills roll into Tennessee Where toughs bounce Mississippi boys In honky-tonk parking lots, A Saturday night sport. “That’s the curve where he lost it. Just too durn drunk to know what hit him Jumped four strands of barbed wire and flipped in that gully. Junior was thrown free, But it sliced his head off just above the eyebrows— Sheet metal and brains, Just sheet metal and brains. Kept the casket closed at the funeral.” You don’t want to know where that smoke comes from Drifting out of hidden hollows. “One time, me and Joe Frank went squirrel hunting Way back...
Read MoreMy Muse Sings Only Country
My muse sings only country— An eighteen wheeler siren Crying, dying, going somewhere With a juke-box beat. I am road-house Homer; Honky-Tonk laureate, Truck-stop troubadour Singing to steel-guitar wails And humming tires. I am highway minstrel Teasing tears from good ole boys When waitresses are Didos In a cross-country Odyssey My muse sings only...
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