Poetry

in all things, sonny boy, my father advised when I complained the mulberries that dyed my lips the protuberant shade of a girl’s had left me with a stomachache. He ascribed the quote to Socrates, his source for all words to the wise. But how did one acquire the wisdom to know which mulberry on…

Driving behind the slipstream of a truck, I wonder what the ruckus is, and pull over to the shoulder with the radio off and the radiator ticking down until it clicks in rhythm with the ticking of their wingtips and that mocking, ridiculous, bickering caucus begins to sound like bliss. It isn’t music, or worship,…

Parted, after thirteen years of shouting and silence and three kids. I was the middle one, the one in the middle. Sundays he took me to the movies, to the luncheonette, to see the freaks on Mermaid Avenue. Have I erased my sisters from the story? One was still an infant, the other Mother’s ally….

She sits on a beach blanket, Gazing in her vacant way From the shadow of a striped umbrella, Talking to herself, The future a doomed plane Yet to take off. I am a baby, sitting Buddha-like Banging the sand, She is young, beautiful, Stranded in the past. Wisps of her hair lift in wind, The…

Go ahead, tell the one about the body & how it has been crafted: a house you’ll someday make a home of. Built-in bookshelves, bay windows, light on every side. You are carpenter & foreman, architect & owner. You’ll come to love the sloping floors, the doors sticking in their frames. All yours. Brick by…

Someone’s in a Hawaiian shirt again out on the parquet, doing the white-guy dance to Celebrate good times, come on!, one palm cemented to a sudsy bowl adorned with mini parasol that will end up between his teeth like Carmen’s rose then raffishly planted in some woman’s hair and she’ll feel fancy and adored. Who…

Don’t get jealous, she says, flicking her cigarette out into the cold and closing the window. I watch the snowflakes blow past, study the piles of books around her bed. I haven’t read any of them. A human body, laid open across two pages like plucked wings. Circles of constellations. I thought I could be…

The ark is barking baby barks. The hems are hawing while there’s sawing going on. Who is that high up, stemming and sterning? We’ve got barrels of loosely packed potatoes, We’ve got the first thick leaves of greens plucked and rolled, We’ve got the got we need to get on with it. If I’ve cleared…

The air is full of smoke due to regional wildfires…Call 911 only if you see active fire or have structure fire —Austin Police Department The city smells of smoke though i’m told The fire’s elsewhere. the fire’s always elsewhere, Until you can see it, then you’re running Toward it or more likely, away. untoward, i…