fine poetry to turn your world around
water —after “the way fingers know the keys starless night” by Uncle Tommy died and Dad told me seven years later / another door he kept locked / to a room dark as a starless night / as if Tommy were still camped on our living room couch after coming back from Vietnam / don’t […]
MythologyIn those days, the wooden drawers of card catalogs still led us to the books we thought we needed, and if we were lucky, to the miracle of cross-references.The rumor was that deep in the Widener Library stacks,in Scandinavian Literature, a blanket more epic than Freyr’s magic Skíðblaðnir guaranteed lovers who tussled under its fibersthe […]
Those little clementine cuties might be my new favorite fruitbecause what other snack starts with using your nails to rip something open, tearing layers from skin, and the scent fill the whole room, leaves my fingertips stained orange and fragrant I like digging my nails into something in the process of desiring it, pith left […]
Cleaning Out Mother’s HouseWe scrub the toilet first thing, swat at cobwebssweep away corpses of a thousand flies.Mice have made nests in the brittle lettersthat reveal our Pappy’s voluptuous affair(who the heck was Dolores?), his failed campaignto bring our father home from the Pacific.He well knew how the army poured whiskeydown the throats of boys […]
