Geese at Midnight
as if honking the light back thru the pine’s lashes like women floating barefoot into fields starved for some moon, their white wings on blue wood, a rustle in wetness. This was not a dream thought it held me as close, a brightness coming back as sound
Read MoreFire
She has a dandelion seed in her hair. He has a stem in his hand, turns to me and says, “This is like a microphone,” and starts singing and then he flings it away— ...
Read MoreWater
The lichens come up easily in my teeth, and the bits of stone stuck to them don’t bother me. My face is a curtain of rain, it sinks into the ground where I see insect nymphs starting to crawl, and I am to them a warm fragrance, milk in the soil. When I rise in the air, songbirds fly through me, sharp wings against naked flight. I borrow leaves from the trees to wear, but they lick me clear; I drop as dew, again biting the lichens, bitter green...
Read MoreEarth
In my bed, I am wrapped in stones I hear a train blowing its whistle the middle of the night I roll toward the train and it listens to me the rails don’t list are straight as anything the back of my head is toward the night-window ...
Read MoreLennon
(based on Keith Richards’ memoir, “Life)” A silly sod in many ways, John was. I liked to tease him for the way he wore his Fender high, under his chin. “Try a longer strap, John, for Christ’s sake; it’s not a violin. No wonder you lugs only rock, can’t roll.” But they thought it was cool. Maybe you had to be from Liverpool. He wasn’t one to mince opinions; said my “It’s All Over Now” solo sucked, and he was right. He was my...
Read MoreLosses, Reachings
Your poems have arrived. Sea gulls wheeling toward shore messages swarming everywhere. I ask you how a single poem can take the whole earth in its palm, even time gathering there in its silent wings. How is it you left the Bay of Biscay and didn’t send me the news of death. Uncle Samuel shriveled and pale in his Bordeaux apartment near the quai. I ask if you witnessed his last words and captured them in a poem that can strike through stone and make a radiance out of the...
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