Article

Every once in a while, it’s true: I get sick of dying. Iambic ghosts choiring                                        their lovely, churchless songs, All the lines of the poem leaning toward terminus Like rows of low windbent weeds—    …

They mouthed the surface of the creek for nymphs tasting their temporary life or striders sculling the tension that was neither water nor air but border, merely. The way a dream nibbles at awareness, the sunnies dared the surface. From the footbridge I saw them school in the little depth below the watercolor that was…

I see the lion as the lion sees the girl he slowly devours in a silent film— a flash of sun-torn flesh— before the vision fades. How foolish she was to wander the woods alone, forgetting the warnings, the memory she had of herself before the woods became a thought from which the lion leapt,…

Alright, I’ll tell you the weirdo dream I had, but before I unwind that yarn, let’s twist our common thread. Like you, I stare plumb through the wall sometimes, because I’m thinking of a tree and a little tenant house beside it, and you-know-who on the stone step watching as I pretend I’m a butterfly…

rain frog          thorn bug          tent bat along a broken mosaic    a spongy    ever-dwindling path soaring trees     woody buttresses      their massive twisted fins lofty crowns     shoulder to shoulder     climbing lime-green vines     restless palms     one…

  for Memory and Oxford   “Apart from her roles as wife and mother, Doris did not play a large part in the stories of Greek mythology.” —anonymous online source   She was a type, all right, an Okie from her daddy’s side, when she met Nereus, maybe even a little flashy looking, the bright…

after James Agee that couple on the road could no more slow their hearts, slough their fear          than could you doff your privilege, un- lace the corset of skin that cuts you to the quick so here you are in the thick of it the sun-bleached air the hard-scrabble beauty of…

          Is the sleeve of that racist century as wrought or gold-chained     as Henry VIII’s who strolls in and says          I’m what matters,               intestines sagging, the regal spittle     bound to stick on dog fur? That’s where…