Iron Rails and Water Dreams
(for Paul “Wolf” Larsen) Born in a town where dogs were mongrels milk cows were skinny-uddered slaughter-house cattle, and farmers scratched out survival on gully-rigged farms best-suited for cattle grass, Coyotes, Russian Thistle and Prairie Dogs, farms where I stacked bales in haymows of airless barns, town where at Sunday Church I sat beside auburn-haired Shirley Franzen with skin so white and lips so red, I gave myself frequently to the Jesus of her fevered faith, even though I believed mostly in my father’s faith in his own two hands. At sixteen I believed in...
Read MoreWaterborne
beginning with a line from Li-Young-Lee The first sky is inside you— first wind and wing: coral lightning, prayer stalk, chunks that glut the prairie. Corn tufts, soy shoots, shifting drifts of blaze/glazed river, glad ground cut to sheaths by water. Loam of too-much-thinking, loam of approaching sea, runnels stuffed with it, lucky sky upended—all of it...
Read MoreWhen Capturing Wolves
When capturing wolves Begin with the eyes Says Bonnie Marris A painter of wild things. “They hear voices older than time,” Chants Cheryl Wheeler Tuning to wolf-calls Ancient and dire. Wolves hold their secrets Like precious bones In iron jaws, Gather on strong-hinged haunches Ready for wolf-love. Wolf-love all timeless Faithful for life. “Begin with the eyes.” Of what do they speak? Of the preciousness of secret bones, Of the sacredness of...
Read MoreUncle Andrew’s Old Photo Album
Many of the photographs were taken on old tin plates that produced brownish prints. Most are fading now. Too many of their young faces are all but gone. It saddens me that in some of the photographs there are just the clothes standing there smiling back at us. It never occurred to me that my grandmother once had a tiny waist or that she was just a tad taller than the boy she married. Andrew was the first born of over a dozen. He had snapshots of aunts and uncles so young not even their offspring can name them. I sit among the images wondering what was going on moments before they were taken....
Read MoreTropic Troping Bird
My world is each changeling stroke, a god’s blue breath. Where clutches end, nothing much to grasp. My skin shines like melted pennies. That’s how the light is on watch. Eternity is incremental. A mouth- to-trough existence is simple. Our regard for each other a series of seconds raring to stare and stare. Narcissistic? Not for me to say. All is blood gain, fib by fib. I wonder, hot-bladed “loon,” are you one such bit of marginalia, a pattern of foxfire scat strewn wherever I turn? Love of pleasure wakes you,...
Read MoreFor my Student on the Question to Stay a Man
Spoiled with comfort, yet unquestioned in so much as my own sexual targets & only at war with my penis in so far as the process of aging, I was rocked back by a student who asked, not about a personal narrative essay, but about his personhood, the choice of his gender, the roaming, the rolling of where his heart stood, weak-ankled, always falling, never sure of a landing. He didn’t even really want to decide anything. He just wanted calm. I spoke or did my best to speak about love, about sex and changing desires, about how certainly the pressure he felt to choose one thing was...
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