Poetry

Mars Being Red

Being red is the color of a white sun where it lingers on an arm. Color of time lost in sparks, of space lost inside dance. Red of walks by the railroad in the flush of youth, while our steps released the squeaks of shoots reaching for the light. Scarlet of sin, crimson of fresh…

Future Farmers

The best boys were called: to buck hay till age seventy-five, to castrate a steer & rescue a breach-birth calf     under a dusty light bulb, father eight or ten daughters & whip sense into their heads (their character would be their dowry), & one smoking bull of a son,     inhale a cyclone    …

Structuralism

The world is not limited to literature. I was sitting in the Adirondack chair when it floated by. Mother and Father were on the other side of the lot building a wall out of small pleasantly shaped rocks. I came to them and said, “It’s in front of us,” the sun burning like an absence….

Salt

Now on this table a small bowl of salt, and I think of the lagoon, quiet at midnight, in moonlight, you in that doorway, your sarong a flare: if I needed you you were there, offering. The body is water and salt. A breathing sea. Why do we think we know better than the body?…

Night in Haydenville

A large steel knife hovers above Main Street. All night it goes house to house, poking its glowing eye through each roof in its turn. It looks in on the accountant, sleeping fingers tabulating debt on a quilt. The chief of police is safely asleep with his secretary. It was never about love. Grandmother’s in…

from The Blank Missives

Dear __________wise, Dreamt you pregnant again, growing further from our days of games. I muttered like a dreaming animal, legs twitching every now and then. If only I might reach up to Mother’s version of heaven or its replica. I wasn’t meant for such a small body, good only for being mistaken for a child’s….