It’s Fall on an even-numbered year
which means an election looms, again.
We wander pumpkin patches, corn mazes, haunted
houses, make holiday plans, think what gifts to give.
I wish to sit by the window and read—but not
outside, where UV rays intrude, and wildfire
smoke, and gunfire, and bird-shit dropped
at random. In my mind’s eye the outdoors
wounds but does not break the skin…
Dearest, I meant to prove myself worthy of every challenge, up to death itself. The day began with feats of strength, like getting out of bed and brushing my teeth. I took till noon to venture out; by then the […]
I found a cricket in my kitchen, wounded, on its back,
little legs flailing as if it could walk upside down. I heard..
no chirps, no yelps of pain, no cries for help;
I lacked the heart to crush him. Gently, I carried him
You needn’t believe in ghosts to dance with them. Just ask the Robin napping in the quiet of a broken fountain, drunk on jasmine and sugar. Ask drowsy Orion, who was up all night, or the Taiga, bent on its […]
To write love poems when this world’s a mess
is like, depending on your point of view,
finding jasmine on the moon—an excess
of joy where all is bleak—or dreams of blue
sky at night, of food in famine…
We are all mourners now, our clothes
funeral shrouds we tear off our backs
when the time comes (and it will come);
in one pocket we carry brushes for tidying
the graves we stumble on in schools, churches,
nightclubs, concerts, grocery stores, streetcorners…
We spill talk like blood—O, I cherish you!
—but we cannot sustain the sentiment,
so we spill blood like blood, a kind of coup
against ourselves; no, I never meant
you harm, just want what’s best for my children
I can’t decide anything these days: sonnet or free verse;
to read on the couch or spend my son’s brief nap putting
away dishes as if dishes could ever stay clean; hope or
despair…
If home’s a castle
the mice have dethroned you, dear—
my heart has no queen…