Poetry

Rural Childhood

Do you want me to show you where the dog licked me in the dream? But now that the dream's over the act's invisible, like water flashing its image only when it moves in the stream bed. My cousin took me to the loft of the barn. We walked to the back then he pointed…

The Farmer

In the still-blistering late afternoon, like currying a horse the rake circled the meadow, the cut grass ridging behind it. This summer, if the weather held, he'd risk a second harvest after years of reinvesting, leaving fallow. These fields were why he farmed— he walked the fenceline like a man in love. The animals were…

And Then

It was an old river town and then the river moved away. Happens all the time: the river decides it doesn't like living next to people, there's a flood upstream and the river takes its chance. The problem with this is that some people who lived on the river are now seriously grieved. They do…

The First Snow

fell early this morning, long before we awoke so that by the time we had dressed, had coffee, there was no trace of it anywhere. All afternoon, I couldn't put my finger on what was missing. You said it was probably nothing or only me distorting the facts again. But in my usual way I…

Home Early

I catch this glimpse of you wheeling your shopping cart along our empty street I see your nakedness And stepping from my car with my briefcase, wanting to catch you before you disappear in the doorway, I also express our odd jobs fighting the vacancy, and the solitude.

The Silver Coin

The cows once believed that if you stand in a pond shaped like a circle during the full moon you'll die. That was everyone's first summer and it finally got so hot the animals decided to hire another cow to go in the water. Just to be sure. This was a cow nobody cared much…

Snowfall

This could be any city, the poor parts, poverty both camouflaged and signaled by unplowed snow. The morning paper still lies on the doorstep, touched only by the cold gloves of a boy who moves in his own world from house to house, past a silhouette pulling a sweater on, to a woman who answers…

Home

My heart and my bones wince. It's so damn sad-looking and ugly, The Bronx— Driving past those small hills Blighted for miles with brick Desert-similar apartment buildings: The landscape I come from. It's so damn ugly in its torment Of knifings and fires, I forget I was happy there, sometimes, In its damp and dingy…