Poetry
White Peaches
In darkness I move around my house as a blind man might, touching the walls, the furniture, small objects, my own body. But this is not blindness, this is darkness. A sheath protects us from what is merciful. On the … Continue reading
Anti-Ars Poetica
for Steve Scafidi There are days the anger dries it up. There’s the sense that the driver pulled over, lugged the unicorn into his pickup, opened the pale hide with a buck knife, fed the red wet flesh through a slurping grinder & … Continue reading
Animalia
— lost the Hawk Nero which with the geese was given away and is doubtless dead for when I came back from Brussels I enquired on all hands and could hear nothing of him — — Emily Brontë, Diary Paper, … Continue reading
Confession: Nagyrev, 1929
[From 1914-1929, local midwives of Nagyrev, Hungary — the “Angelmakers” — conspired with villagers to murder husbands who had returned from the Western Front. Any telling starts like the next, a home brew of whispers, warnings, clues. But you must … Continue reading
Wahunsenacawh
When Powhatan moves west to die, the world is still old and voleries of Carolina parakeet wheel ripe green and orange out of the rum cherry. It is probably autumn. He takes the feather-work cloaks and crafted mussel shells, each … Continue reading
Memento Mori
Because they had no pictures of her breathing, they stretched her small breathless body on a child’s fainting couch, pressed down her eyelids, and tucked a china doll in the crook of her arm — as if in a … Continue reading
St. Gwynfed’s Parishioner
I’m John Colwin and I call Saint Gwynfed’s my parish. No tithing. No minister fashioning pulpit phrases for the pound’s sake. My theology’s all with the bards of Holyhead Town, those guardians of Welsh lore. Some lines I have by … Continue reading
A Scrawny Fox
Near the end, only one thing matters. Yes, it has something to do with the moon and the way the moon balances nervously on the rooftops of neighborhood houses. You remember the landscape of your childhood, your house and yard … Continue reading
“Deep Purple”
Monday, and today’s job is cleanup. I’m humming an old song to keep me company, something about purple and a garden wall. The children are concerned, for it was only yesterday I measured out my future, stretching greedy-big as … Continue reading
Sure Things
On the day after All Souls I go to pay my taxes. The crow is waiting on the town hall lawn, full of flap, shine, and sass, immune to grievances, withdrawing a line of sustenance from the soil. I have … Continue reading