Poetry

Floater

It is always there, the blurry dot, the mark, so easy to dismiss, between you and the life you’re focused on, though more distinct with white behind it: a blowing curtain, a wedding gown, while pinning bed sheets on a line, a blank wall in a waiting room, and, late in life, while leaning on…

The Window Mannequin

I tie my hat—I crease my shawl (522) —Emily Dickinson   is carried crown first through light that hums. Her country is built of two rooms: need and desire. Birds rarely come near. She cannot see her shoes or the tops of buildings or the moon. She wonders if she is kind. She is as…

Social Security

You have to feel your feelings     Right now I feel amused, uncomfortable, tolerant, with a twist in my heart, as if I’m applying for a visa to the country of unhappiness and sorrow which gets mixed reviews on Trip Advisor. In this waiting room, we are all seedy & hopeless and the elephant…

In High School

I miss the charcoal drawing of gallium that hung in my chemistry class. How the metal whose melting point is below human body temperature was misspelled galium, how the hand cupping the silver goop stopped at the wrist. I don’t think it was meant to disturb, to invoke a caught thief. I don’t think the charcoal spreading…

A Postcard from St. Barts

An Elvis impersonator curling his lip as he limbers up for “Return to Sender,” a wave may develop   that slight curling of the lip till it becomes a sneer. Not that a wave may more than slightly develop. The character of Snare   becomes a sneer no less than Master Fang, the character of…

Moral Compass

When I gave up praying, an $800 windfall arrived in the mail and no longer did I brew my tears into a bitter tea that paid the bills.   Though it turned out to be surplus in the escrow account, once I’d have chalked it up to God—that unexpected check a biscuit for the trick…