Gourd
In a sideboard shuttered away, I find it.Shake it.let it fill my palm—this brown surfacesmooth and firm.Who held it,carried it to this shore?I shake...
Big Sky
Big sky, how you fillwith hope mid-oceanmid-prairie, mid-uplands.Mountain tops recallferocious winds worthyof note.They sing the one notein the roof rack, the onewhistled tree...
A Heart-Shaped Amulet
Gazing upon the houses and fields of my kingdomI can see my grandmother outside a cottage –around her neck a heart-shaped amulet.Behind...
How Soon Is Now?
Christmassomewhere in Dixie
a young mothernurses her baby
listening to anythingbut The Smiths
while geekstry to figure out
her nameher location
Students shotthe footage
yet thered hat
that...
Fenwick Island
I wish you were here,for you would understandhow the confident starscan move this nightto companionable pity,unwholesome as it is,how the imperishable seamasquerades its...
Self-Portrait
after Adam Zagajewski
Between dead heading the liliespicking blueberriesand arranging the fruit plate,half my July morning passes.My village is not strange to me.I have not...
WHERE ARE THE SUPERHEROES?A jubilant time, the era of the superhero,that decade when a vital young President,rejuvenated by a medical breakthrough,laid down plans for...
Tyrant-Poem
IWe will shake our bodies like animals abandoned in the forest,and the moon will sing lullabies for thedead;the dead who were mine and did...
FALLSTREETLIGHT SWITCH
The sodium-vapor streetlightswith fresnel lenses like lidded eyeshave been replacedwith horseshoe-like arcs of LED lights.As the morning stays dark longerand evening comes on...
Cloth & Sun
Chaos greets me at the door—
broken things swirl,
dust motes through worn curtains,
a breath before the next bruise.
You coil like an old cobra,
fangs...
