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boring

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You don't want to knowthe details of my lifethe gossipthe boring moments strung togetheracross the lap ofmy sense of responsibilityit drives methrough the daysdoing this and thatchore, check on the listi am tired and need to stop for a drinkand then, i am filled up for a…

T.S. Eliot On His Deathbed

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I guess at the end you’re only looking forward. Or upward actually, since you can only lie there on your back looking upward, straight ahead toward infinity, your mouth in a grimace, with the ghostly pink lips peeled back from the teeth.

Morning People

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she thinks she looks good in her short red dress, black makeup around her eyes, last night's lipstick a slap of crimson on her cheek. "like this," she says, holding the hammer above her head.

My 27th Great-Grandparents

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Early Spring, 1075, Northumbria: Judith, too ashamed to speak, too angry to cry, waves her handmaiden away. She wants no food. Wind drives icy rain across the thickness of…

Greener Than Thou: Saving the Earth, One Smackdown At A Time

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Are you a hostile person who gets into trouble when you express your anger? Would you like to annoy the hell out of people and get away with it?

When Spectacle Replaces Ritual,

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The aisle, nave and/ transept twist themselves/ into an auditorium.

The Ogontz Branch

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There are stories I will not tell, stories I shudder / to remember. You'll forgive me for withholding them from you. / You may, of course, not tell me everything about yourself either

Artist's Statement: Oracle

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Mark Reep is a faded Polaroid oracle taped to the only unbroken window of an abandoned house in Ithaca NY.

everything moved in circles

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everything moved in circles like the music, the booze and the drugs

Full Frame

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A month before the real flowers came, amputated trees for 31 miles were festooned with pink blossoms. The petals were tufts of Fiberglass insulation shorn from houses incapable of withstanding 260-mph winds -- more than twice the punch Katrina delivered t

Northeast of Eden (Memoir; Editor: Charlotte Curtis)

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Snakes have no eyelids, no hips, no lobby in Washington (some creatures do!) and little support at home.

ghosts

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conflicts in time

disparate haiku (mostly)

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faith in gravity/permitted them to extol/the guillotine's blade.

Rent a DNA

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“Yo, Paciorek. Lend me your DNA, cuz I left mine on the farm, and I have a test tomorrow,” Feller ordered in a commanding voice, because he had gumption.

On a Count of the Stars

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The number is very large/ and perpetually changes// as old stars fade, explode,/ or collapse into something not stars

Wintering

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Winter makes me reconsider.

The Night Shore

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Somniloquies rise like the drowned . . .

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 31

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I was always bi-polar. I didn’t realize it was a mental illness until my divorce lawyer had the court order a psychiatric analysis.

Four Sieges

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Nicole knows that Deirdre is winding up for the weekly pitch, practicing the line in her mind.

Snowed-in March Against the Beautiful Pain Memory of Love, A Ghazal

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Infinite patience, tempered glass hearts—is this what it takes? / Shatterproof backtrack, slow march through reversals—too, what it takes.

Cheap and Convenient

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Later, when she said she'd had miscarriages, I should have put it all together.

Space Program

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Mercury and Gemini disappointed.

Calling All Feathers, Do You Hear

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These little things, they are the hopes We were waiting for, they are everywhere. I made this one just for you. Call them feathers. Call them roses. You'll always See them if you need them. These Little things carry the good news…

Max & Julia

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I heard the basketball hitting the pavement in the park across the street, right outside our window... I heard it every day in an evenly spaced rhythm, as if it was keeping time, like a metronome on my life...

Conversations

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That won’t kill me, will it? I asked. Maybe, the doctor said.

Freelance Your Way to Poverty

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Buyers of freelance writing have a well-deserved reputation for responding slowly, thereby increasing your pleasure in much the same way that the Pointer Sisters longed for a slow hand.

O Where Did Our Funny Go?

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What a nation! First we lost our money Now we’ve lost our funny

Epiphenomenal Glider

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Hissing through the opening, the spirits have no place.

Flamboozled in the Beak

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I was looking for an inn to get a cup of calf soup before jacking ribs at the mutton joint. Feng calls, running numbers on an engine zone out in the valley.

The Show Must Go On

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I had the idea for a pageant for my obedience school at spring graduation