I.
“Koi,” in Japanese,
is homophonic for the word “love.”
Koi fish can recognize
the person that feeds them.
Circling your mother’s pond,
they open their wide mouths
to vanish the...
Toward the New Year, that late December,
we parked the car near the old Sealtest Plant
just off Pennsylvania a block down from
Washington Circle where, since...
Climb the stairs. Take the call.
Stand by the old green chair.
Don’t sit down.
Hear your mother say
It’s cancer.
Don’t answer right away.
Clamp down your fear
before you...
In August heat, the urge to be misplaced
can find you standing on the sidewalk, disoriented,
holding someone else’s photos by mistake.
Trying to place that cottage,...
Ed. Note: Another in our series of poems by writers who participated in Arlington Writers Resist.
My anthem is the serenade of birds,
sung without regard...
for David Hutto
Up there’s the interstate, peeping through trees.
Down here among hollows, satellite dishes,
a man on his deck guzzles beer, wishes
he were driving that...
Change of Elevation
When we first moved here, birds—red-headed house finches, I believe,a family—twittering high up
in the blue spruce that hangsfrom the neighbor’s yard. You...
ZULU, THE LANCE AND THE LANGUAGE
First, the language refused to enter my ear and be understood.
Instead I chased words around,
words that hovered beyond grasp
and...
Firework ScarsI stepped by the waterfall,memories restless, awakenedfrom induced night slumber,drugged with bottle contentsuntil the pain of tears vanishedUntil the misery of wrought hands,twisted...
