He’s the one they want. His name attracts talent and interest. He’ll show up with that guitar, hardly say two words, listen to the track, skim the chart. Then he’ll plug in, adjust levels and play the absolute correct thing. First time through: perfect. But then he’ll go back and find some way to make…
1 Sure, she wears men’s trousers, but that’s not all she does You make me want to say that while doing dangerous performance art Decrying the existence of men You make me want to wear carabiners and get a social work license You make me want to look at my large wristwatch and say…
The world is filled with accidental pinhole cameras cracks in doorways holes in fences points where light is channeled, flipped, and abused to confuse our secrets with our proclamations. We live in these pictures illuminated by undetected images. Entire other lives developing, shining around our corners, the light I use to read your mood. A…
Miriam made eggs when I asked for eggs. “To make you feel healthier,” she said. Miriam cleaned the house when I asked her to clean the house. “To make you feel healthier.” Miriam sewed buttons and hemmed pants when I asked her. “To make you feel healthier.” Miriam drove me to work and played music…
On one of those late-autumn nights when the cold had cleared the air but the storms hadn’t yet begun spilling over the serrated rim of the Sierra Nevada, a star flared up in the evening sky, gathering such intensity that my neighbors in the Sierra Shadows trailer park stepped from their wheeled domiciles to gaze…
An accident at first, her husband gone to work, her stranded sans remote atop the treadmill, two miles still to run. And so, she watches. The volume low, she notes how still it blares; above, a comedy reel the feed below: The snow will turn to ice by morning. Senator ready to deal. And on…
I walked around the thrift store like it was a museum. Looking at the details of yesterday one footstool at a time. I passed the posters of World War II era, the ones in which Uncle Sam points at me. The leisure suits as brown as new spring dirt. I found albums that completed someone’s…
Clanking chain, the claw that snags, the boat wind-bumped beside the Bat Islands I heard as bad, chop-tossed in my bunk all night I didn’t sleep lost in fear forged from everything I didn’t know and don’t, hear anchor and think anvil heavy under hammer and spark. Say spark and I hear fat rain hissing…
What if we could get rich From experiences What if our time In exotic places Or even a walk in the woods Counted as valuables Raising our net worth in joy We could display Our adventures like jewels Laid out on a velvet cape My trips to Italy Could have bought a house My bliss…
I am writing the poem of anger, and it has never been so easy to write a poem, but when I tell the poem to slow down, take it easy, he leaps from the desk, races down the stairs and out the door. Now the poem of anger is running through crowds of people hurrying…
