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Cherry Almond Streusel Cake

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Tomorrow we will eat it in anger.

Water

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After ten days in Jeddah, I start to miss the rain back home in Tennessee....

Literary Intercourse

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Meaning is harder to sell, unless it’s an analysis of why there is a Justin Bieber.”

We Are In Our Thirties Now

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For years, Nina lived in an apartment with furniture that was silver or clear or metallic, she could see her reflection in every surface. She had an enormous television that took up one entire wall of the small living room. She and Anna and Desmond, Nina's downstairs …

I Don't Know How the Nights Can Be So Long When Life Is So Short

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I will always remember that picture of you in your bright blue summer dress, with your arms spread out against a wooden fence in Central Park.

fields of gold

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The son stood on the porch with his grip packed. "I'm off to mine me a fortune a gold, Daddy." "Boy, there's a fortune in gold right here," said the father, indicating the ripe wheat, glowing in early morning sun. The kid slumped. "Pop, you turn over a rock there,…

Wind Bag

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Last night I decided to go through my bag of wind and sort things out. I'm a hoarder, and wind is no exception. I collect winds. I found two siroccos, five simooms, three foehns, eight Chinooks, ninety gales, thirty zephyrs, two nor'westers, a monsoon, a…

The Thing on Marlow Street

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After all, if she could get through World War II with no more than a couple of letters and numbers on her arm, she could, sure as hell, get through this.

The Hors d’oeurves Plate at the OH Townhouse, Eureka

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They got slices of greasy salami On top of round mini carrots, celery Pepperoncini, slices of sweet pickles They got cinder block walls A Tiki Bar with glasses hanging Upside down from the stemware over the bar They got wood paneling, cottag

the marriage of heaven and hell & their cat

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It is hard

How to Lose Control of Your Pencil

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Real hands

The Train Rolls On

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From my office window, I watch the trains roll in and out of the city. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of passengers staring out windows as the train slows, the ones who have another destination. I've been on those trains before, ones that took me far away from all that…

Working Animal

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There is an air of sulfur about you. I cannot tell if / it emanantes from you, or it is the stink of your clothes / from having been in hell for so long.

Cassandra Folds the Poem in Her Hand and Loses My Heart in the Process

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Ours is but the very small effort being made here.But it's a good enough keeper for all of usto always remember off. All the tins thataren't really going to save usfrom starving, now are neatly arranged all around, justin case, stacked…

Scanner

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The Bearcat 101 was a police scanner popular with a certain type during in the 1970s. Daddy was that exact type. I found the Bearcat in his apartment after he passed. His illness was a common one, the process gradual, implacable. No red and blue…

The Poet's Mark

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Often I want to kiss their lips Drink in every word they have written

The Fat Man and the Magician

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The Fat Man took a sip of whiskey, then replaced his glass on the table next to his fedora. …

The Fourth Prague Defenestration: 5

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Vladimir walked down the little path next to the creek with us. I stopped along the way and picked off a sliver of some of the bedrock that was sticking out alongside the narrow path, to take home with me as a souvenir of my family castle, just to be ab

Dear Sir

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[Lights up on CLAUDE. He's holding a letter, standing.]CLAUDE: Dear sir, We regret to inform you That your (that place with cream walls and dog hair…

a grey green enamel vase in the rain

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we hover black as carrion birds with a glut empty need seems to me she's fell as thee and knows exactly where we posture anxiously spitting falsehoods on cue twittering like snipes cause there's nothing left to do she might have spent her whole life just

Roanne Smiled

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With some of these guys it was like propping a kid on a training-wheel bike, then steering the kid down the street til he figured out what to do next. Tricks would come into the bar. Roanne had a smile for all but the dregs…

The Walk of Shame

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There it was One abandoned high heel shoe on the sidewalk Could have been Some kind of robbery Though Maybe it was just The beginning of the Walk of shame

Walking To Gibraltar, Chapter 12: In Which Frank Consults A Mirror

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"I need a male friend, and I think I've found one."

Stealing From A Corpse

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He kept one scarf. It was the scarf that she would tie around his eyes to play with him, long, until he was in his teens. A silly game that made her happy and he squirmed with delight until he got too old. She did not want him to see her, only to know if

Improvisation on a few lines by Mark Strand

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I am tripping on poetry. Purple ink drips from my eyes like ergot of rye.

On A Carport in Bethlehem

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I can hear soft rain

Island Numbers

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an island hidden in the sound holds treasure

Upon a Time

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then all crawl out from the wreckage to begin a dance lasts all night so by morning we'll be tired surprised we're still upright

The Scrawny Dog Gospel

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Opportunity, says Webster, is a, "favorable juncture of circumstances." In my Oxford book of quotations, there are seven famous lines about opportunity. Seven – that’s it! There are twenty-seven regarding failure. Seems it's been easier for the great

#53 Cut Up

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I loved her when she first came calling in the sodden dawn of spring. She was a strange and dangerous flower. Together we drank up all the money. The days staggered away like drunks lurching down a flophouse hall.