Poetry
Dear Francis,
Personal Credo
The Forgetful Beasts
She said, Let there be stories; and there were stories.
As she spoke, her breath crystallized into the shapes of birds and beasts.
But the animals were forgetful,
so she had to teach them to remember the words that …
Why Can’t Middle Age Be Like Childhood But with Sex, Liquor and Hipper Boots
Some days all I need to be happy is a subway seat
and a Diet Dr Pepper. Other days I’m waiting
for the fog to spell out my name (it never happens).
I want to believe in the bulbous green …
vignettes of a lost wife
I.
It is April. Climbing roses crown headfirst through the soil,
ripening under my criss crossed legs without my permission.
The aroma of apricots hangs in the air like wet linens, tempting
the noses of churchgoing boys, but I refuse
…Don’t bury the dead
I’ve been broken
boy turned to drink
left to rust family-damp
with prayer I wish
he would just stop
digging in
graveyards.
We don’t bury the dead.
We remember the sky
likes to fall
down the throat.
We call it
…something that might make a suitable home
I wake up sweating. My nostrils are raw and peeling skin. I cough to catch my breath. I have no fever, no flu. I keep losing things. Last night it was my twelve-year-old daughter in a cornfield. We rode in …
My Brother Calls
to let me know Sonic
is including gravy
in their chicken strips dinner again.
He asks when I’m coming home
for Thanksgiving. We don’t
speak often. Having not been raised
in the same house, little has passed
between us— no …
The Hostages
It was you or your house that dead-ended the road
and fitted my living in until I could nothing
but survive amidst the furniture, the clothes
the drawers closed in that blocked my body
from the vicious in you, from …
