Sunday Phone Call
All last night I held conversations with you. You stubbed out your cigar, striding barefoot into my dream and went on sparring with me though your last month in the hospital was silent. How do I make this a normal Sunday evening? Make a plate of spaghetti, walk up the dirty road with the dog, rent a foreign film. Instead I down Jameson neat by the woodstove. When the phone rings in the kitchen, I forget that it can’t be you. Remember Christmas Eve of ’68 when you drilled me to repeat that new telephone number over and over in the passenger seat, just in case I got lost among the...
Read MoreEmily as if It is Mercy
Bucket fair, as in as much fairness as one bucket can hold, the parts of me that slosh around have been contained by Emily & her strength of arm, her patience above the well, to not dip or dump the bucket in the returning dark, is verse, is hymn, is mercy. If she would only back away from the narrowing liquid that once took my...
Read MoreShifting
Something shifts underfoot as the train jolts and slides in a long screech of wheels braking too late. You and I sit, presents on our laps, and stare at our watches, adding up how late we will be. A man across the aisle slams his paper down and sighs. Then the lights flicker out and the train hisses, a final breath escaping. We are still, stopped blank as a clock, in the middle of somewhere too dark to see. Outside, flashlights zigzag, throwing off light like lines being cast haphazardly into the black pools of night. In the glancing chaos we can make out hunched bodies,...
Read MoreStep by step the nights
Step by step the nights taste from weeds salted down though even shorelines decay, taking hold between the dirt and one last look as dew half marshland, half within reach where her breasts are forever water and from this darkness the thirst you use for mist and bitterness, surrounded by rocks and in your throat her lips saying things, ordinary things.
Read MorePossession
I wander through my parents’ house cataloging items in my head thinking, “This is mine. This is mine, too,” saying, “Mom, you really should get someone in here to help you clean.” my mother won’t let a stranger touch her things, she says, all the things my father bought her before he passed. my mother doesn’t need any help from me, she says. Everything is fine. my sister calls me late at night wonders how our mother’s doing, wants to talk about assisted living, a nursing home clearing out the house. she wants the zebra lamps, she says, she...
Read MoreThe Plankhouse Revisited
photo of the Plankhouse by Wade Allen I. The awesome mist of some unknown flower Sprindges my voice into my father’s words — This plantation’s not what we used to work, When Pap George, his father, David, held our Future in slavery, though we knew that its hour Had come: I think of the women — ...
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