Taffy My heart is salt water taffy. Salty, sweet, sticky. Comes in a colorful box often found in the bargain bin of a gift soft...

Sunday Best he blows dandelions for his babies in the corner store parking lotin their Sunday best, following this morning's sermontheir wishes scatter across the...

God Was Hiding Faith cannot be held as an old grey handNor as a breath to put voice to prayerIn faith I rendered a final...

Quarry The sun looks higher here by the quarry Daylight savings a forgotten grumblefor the sleep-deprived days of yestermonth. The time is truly 6:49, but soon thebiddies...

Midmorning Break My mother had ten. We dartedin and out from under her wings.She smoked cigarettes and dranktea that had cooled — a sip and...

What Joan and Marie tell me After “Merci” (oil on canvas, 1992), one of Joan Mitchell’s latest works before she succumbed to cancer in October...

Street Scene Early evening heat rises frompavements, from cement and asphalt,carrying a scent slightly sour,slightly acrid—oily and tar-like. Outside the café, beyond its fenced-intables, a large...

You Ask Me About America’s Future I remember this –I was a child clutching the string of a green balloonShivering next to classmatesOn a blustery...

stars melt in your skin for R.M quiet nights held inside your hands like water waitingfor the chance to become your ladder. you first reminisced, as if...

Coaling the Furnace Am I such a romantic to believethat the coaling of the furnacewas a job my parents enjoyed sharingbefore it was exchanged for...