Poetry

People Walking in Fog

They try to watch themselves, drifting in a white sigh, the boats and trees, and themselves, too, when they think of it, spun from sheets of gauzy droplets with which to tar the morning white and walk upon it. The horizon yawns. The earth is liquid. They can feel it, and not just it but…

Talk About Failure

Well, there’s the lack of vacuuming, carrot juice spills on the ivory couch, dust running along the floorboards like a pet, veiling the TV, sills, the furnishings of books, shoes without glue, the lack of comfortable seating or dining, the canopy I gave away, childhood desk sold, gold chair left in a spidery garage, rose…

Goldsboro Narrative #27

The dark and heavy coat she always wore hid From her as much as anyone What grew her belly out one thought at a time. And she who did not know her body, Who was surprised to feel it Created with some boy she’d barely met, Ignored the word so much a shock She was…

Rising dream tide

Three times she bit the Atlantic but only once barked at thunder. Lonely thunder and now her teeth-marks float to sea. This is her first trip to how Ocracoke Island smells and the ocean, I’ll count my encounters with the wide, ineffable appetite as I go to bed, with the factory of liquid fold and…

Mine Own John Clare

He was the first person I knew who spoke to God and to whom God replied. And he was the first person I knew who had written the great works of whomever you might name— mine own T. S. Eliot—though he affected no accent and wore a shrunken Grateful Dead T-shirt. It was not only…