Stem-Winder
We’ll join in protest around favors-spent praising
fate-cakes wherever the green apple leaves.
We’ll circle in song the meandering candlelight
vigil our voices savoring bold freedom-flavors.
We’ll stand...
The Sign
—to Seamus Heaney
It might’ve been a joke, but spoke to melike a blackbird’s cry, giddyand defiant, not knowing this placebut feeling in place,...
Morning Coffee
shockingly bitter like a friend with a dirty secret
the fun of Robusta is its acridity, acidity flavor brash as a sharp-accented lemon...
From The Adirondack Chair
When young’uns (poets mostly)
say elder
They spout it
having concluded
that anyone over 39
sat a couple of rows back
from Sappho
in...
PORTRAIT OF DISAPPOINTMENT
after years of hoping things would changegiving in to "well, that's the way it is,"look me in eyes and realizethis is who...
Interstate
Most take the ramp for common needslike heeding nature’s urgent call.No matter where the journey leads,though, for some reason exit all,
Like getting out to...
geometric pattern, untroubled
how long traced
out there on the marble floor
in paradise—where we have just arrived
our object–we are again reminded
was to love and be fully...
Merton in East Asia
Those daysthat carried him
never carried himfar enough
Thomas Merton foresawhis death in a vision
and still flew to Thailandon a speaking tour
An accidentalcrown...
A SIMPLE MACHINEThe noose that was used to hang John Brown is allegedly in the permanent collection at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Frayed and wild...
The following poem was translated from Zarpamos, a selection ofpoems by the Oaxacan poet Guadalupe Ángela, translated from Spanishinto English by Yael Kiken. This...
