Poetry

An angler slashed on in black is crouched in a chaos of daisies and mulleins, on a riverbank, from beyond the high edge of which blooms an apple orchard that demonstrates signs of human labor, a rake against a tree, … Continue reading →

Grandmama chewed mouthfuls ripe as wild plums. Spat. Missed houseflies and hound dogs that stirred up the dust. Her front porch mottled brown. Honey, idle that cuspidor closer, can’t see where I’m aiming. I pushed the can close with a … Continue reading →

Spondee; name – damp earth and distance. This is what it’s like to leave – first the dirt, robin perched on the handle of the spade; Mary, up- ending a bucket for him to sit while she hisses the milk … Continue reading →

Alias razor wire, fashioned after the free-reed, bellows-drive instrument, patented in 1884 by Sir Charles Wheatstone. Early in its history, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee was arranged for English concertina. Used as ramparts in WWI. You’ve seen archival photographs of … Continue reading →

Soon I will be as old as the Shan Van Vocht – (although no one knows how old she is.) Soon I will ask to meet her on the borders of Kildare. It will be cold. The hazel willow will … Continue reading →

The blacksmith sun hammered the empty plain Into a great gold plate: a mere mountain Wouldn’t withstand that onslaught day in and out. Bird droppings dropt on bright rock rang like cut Glass, and a scorpion darted, like a tongue, … Continue reading →

In the beginning, typography was denounced as “The Black Art.” Though why or by whom I can’t exactly say. Perhaps it had to do with an invention’s magic air, or the fear that the spread of the word would undo … Continue reading →

1791: St. Paul’s Cathedral [Clement] Dressed for rejoicing in red jackets, we climb the sides of the organ to reach the knobs. I yank out a note, mix in a fifth, an octave, add eerie flutes and a buzzing multitude … Continue reading →

Daylight illuminated, but only for those who had some knowing in their seeing, and night fell for everyone, but harder for some. A belief in happiness bred despair, though despair could be assuaged by belief, which required faith, which made … Continue reading →

We called them The Bible Couple because they had one, a spiffy leather-bound number with its own latch that snapped front cover to back as though the gospel were a snake that had to be secure din its carrying box. … Continue reading →