Poetry |
“Divination” & “Linked”
“With one massive arm / she hugged the huge / brown ram around its chest / so its legs hung, / hooves grazing ground. // In the other hand, ungloved, / shears buzzed.”
Poetry |
“The Relics We Carry”
“The head of St. Catherine, the heart of St. Camillus, the tongue / of St. Anthony, the blood of St. Januarius. The relics we carry.”
Poetry |
“The Underworld” & “Mudman”
“I press on through the half-light, reaching // at last the crossing where she’s kept. Amber / light projects her number on the plinth. // Make no mistake. This is the one you seek …”
Poetry |
“Screenshot”
“My last few wisps of faith / are history, and sorry not sorry // I knew it was coming when / grown-ass adults gathered at dusk // in the cul-de-sac to break down / cardboard boxes.”
Poetry |
“The Window / Nine Attempts”
“Then all day it shifts and lengthens, pools and stops short, pours itself out, / ripples like water over shoals, // like your fingertip / tracing down my keel. // I mean breastbone.”
Poetry |
“Long Exposure”
“Love what you’ve never seen: encircling sphere / of icy shards beyond the heliopause, / too small, too faint, too far to be much more // than theoretical.”
Poetry |
“The transmigration of souls in the donut shop”
“The baker is making a mobius strip of lemon cream. It darts through the crowd. / The ballooning heart of the construction worker is being sawed in two / by the manager.”
Poetry |
from On Dangerous Ground: Film Noir Poems
“Poetry and film noir both often rely on set formats, manipulate narrative coherency, and proceed by implication. As for the doomed film noir protagonist, it is not unusual for him, and it is usually him, to have the temperament of a thwarted poet …”
Poetry |
“The Known Consequence of Living” & “Defining or Defying Gravity”
“In the hierarchy of all I don’t know / about the world, invisible force / is in the upper echelons. / I should have leaned harder / into geology or biology / or archeology for rocks / & blood & bones to touch.?
Poetry |
“Death Was My Doula”
“The priest at my wedding / crossed our marriage and last rites in a two-for-one special / with a wink and promise to see our favorite guests again / before the year was out.”
Poetry |
“Why I Am Not a Mother” & “Inheritance”
“She improved everything / she touched, re-hemming her skirts with // lace, replacing the plain blue buttons / on a winter coat with a set of red leather, / twisted to fashionable knots.”
Poetry |
“April 9th, 1965, Appomattox”
“I lived not far away in Lynchburg / where my friends identified me as ‘Yankee’ / since I was born in the north and had lived there / for a while …”
Poetry |
“Exercise Path Off the Lackawanna River Heritage Trail“
“But does / our distanced bond / with nature, along with / a shift in focus / so far from where we are, / mean we already seek answers / elsewhere?”
Poetry |
“Five Ways of Being Alone,” “Sunday Morning, March 13, 2022” & “Rules for the Dance”
“He can never get the help / that would help him feel / the help that he never received. // And therefore he / is beyond help.”
Poetry |
“Entering the Genome” & “Dirge for a Dying Barn”
“The DNA comes back / whispering secrets / you can’t connect / to anything you know.”