Poetry
The Farm Wife Turns Off the TV Evangelist
The Jesus I grew up with likes to be outside. If he’s not fishing, he’s picking figs or showing off his mustard crop. He prefers dusty roads, the common sparrow, and lilies of the field. When he knocks on your … Continue reading
Salamander, Slate Gray
Motionless in rotting shags buried until an instant ago in darkness under the sodden log I rolled aside like the stone from Jesus’s tomb. You are alive, of course — you were always alive, breathing lungless, sorting the world through … Continue reading
Mantis Madrigal
Earth’s heir, pre-historic prophet in prayerful ambush position on the sea side of this beach-house door, intricate erector-set contraption of twigs camouflaged to match salt-bitten boards, you swivel your skeptical, bicycle-seat head my way, a cosmos horoscopal in eyes bulbous … Continue reading
Promise Madrigal
Fetal fawn of an aborted hour albinic at the pool’s morning edge, was gone before I could return with spade, alarmed dog, my dread. What’s Time that it hitches a dropped thing into weeds’ misrule & gives to its miscarriage … Continue reading
Bluebird Madrigal
Bell’s peal made visible, scrap of sky foreign as ice caves in a foreign country, or the self one seeks, fingering a postcard, its crenellated deeps, exotic stamps, hard -copy post, outmoded as paraffin or ink, odor of summer, or … Continue reading
Shipwreck Sunday
(for James Tate) Those cold bones of marrowed wood beneath a ragged lake gone still for once, Lake Michigan. How you’d hidden them beneath a coat of silt until today. Unbuttoning bares your clavicle of hull and keel, your ribs … Continue reading
Classic Green Army Figures Give Up Guns for Yoga
(for Dan Abramson, creator of “Yoga Joes”) At the apex of the pose those little green arms feel the pop of little green tendons. Satisfaction of the stretch. Whoever said lay down your weapons has never laid down weapons in … Continue reading
Monongalia County, West Virginia
Red dirt never washes away—blue hills Pocked by long grey scars from mines and slurry Pools trembling, always, over someone’s home, Some holler’s elementary school, green rivers, Blue, brown rivers all running toward the old New, Its deep gorge filled … Continue reading
To Grandmother’s Body
after Mari L’Esperance Of blue hills with faces pillowed in cloud. Of mines. Your daddy’s lunchbox. A gold bird Unlatching a song for no one left to hear. Of water. Kanawha brown, Monongahela blue, The Cheat and the New. Saying … Continue reading
Unstill Life, with Fox
Tandem axle semis blow up 29, headlights parting night imperiously as Moses the Red Sea. Yellow LEDs festoon the cabs but dark hides the eyes inside. I catch the ragged thrum propounded through the asphalt that connects us momentarily in … Continue reading