Poetry

Billie, I told the Devil not to let you into Hell.It’s where you think you’re going soon, when at last that golden horse’s hooves runroughshod over your heart. No, you have your own heat, a heady steam off your scalp. Before you,I hated my smell, like his fingertips after stealing a girl from her mother’s…

Lunch recess, a football tossed in the air,John paced the length of the fence as a small group of girls gathered to gossipabout Duane and who he liked while John, wanting so much to connect, ran at themscreaming “John germs,” touching Cindy’s back. When the football soared too high, John jumpedup on a stone wall, losing his footing, impaling…

For Laurie Lago It’s an opulence oftenbest manifested in the obituaries.Edward, for instance, for whomthe most that could be saidwas a headline that he had been“A Lifetime Member ofCostco.” Or that real daredevilLeo, whose very last wordswere “Watch this!”

I had only recently been setfree—not from prison, butfrom something akin to it, a facility just as meanwith a warden of a differentsort. It could have been said of me that I was now outwalking the streets. That’swhat could have been said. In truth I was at home,glued to my computer,at it again, conversing this…

Who was that girl in the maze, too busy being a needleto understand she was also an eye? All bothered heat. All lightthe underside of a storm cloud scraping the city with its silver. Some of her is left in me, slipped into the marrow, cagedbeneath ribs. Is she this blunt thumping? And if sowhere…

“It’s not a good disease to have,” my doctor says.I admire his grim honesty, I admire itgreatly. “Indolent, but it usually does progress.”Which sounds about right for me.Two years of misdiagnosed tormentand now this. I ask him about suicide.He nods. “It happens,” he says.When I tell him I’ve seriously considered it,he says my disease would…

In which the receding sea makes Black Beach a mirrorand I’m given another sky, where the green glass like a lozenge floats—rubbed rough and soft—and I feel after a long month of worry           the sea reminding the shard: you’re sand. I roll the glass cleanbetween my hands, dip it into a tidal pool and hold…

Now my father cannot remember the name of the war he fought inseventy-some years ago. When I remind him, he becomes belligerentabout a war that never really ended, and one that could start again. Not Korea, I know that much, son! It’s the war that starts with anM. To try and correct would not be…

A baby green anolein the bathtub gripsporcelain whileI shower. Petrifiedsurvivalists, both, wedrip. Used to stillnessin downpours, itmoves only whenI pluck its bodyinto my handsand bend a gentlecage. I’m savingyou from me, I say.Soaked. A prehistoricface pokesbetween thumbs,a spell on the lips—clinging to an ideaof escapethis tiny crisisbounds alongmy lifelinebetween palms likeI’m holding myown green heart…