(after Edward Hopper’s Cape Cod Evening)
The light is everything;
it saturates the locust grove,
inundating
uncut grass,
negating
shadows,
conjoining husband
and wife in oblivion.
Melancholy blinks
in the black eye
of a whippoorwill.
Who catches the notes
of its song?
Only the dog.
Dusk, patient
as a chrysalis.
They can’t hear
the transmutation
yet, but they will.
Oct 19, 2018
Oct 19, 2018 at 1:17 PM UTC
Evening docks
like a desolate ship,
indigo and monolithic,
its umbral sails
swelling above
the distant hips of
a titanic continent.
Sleep tastes like a mossy anchor;
it lurches, shifts, and slips into gear—
the sound of stars grinding on stars.
I sail across an ocean of teeth.
I acquiesce. I drown
in the velvet
whirlpool of
your absence.
Oct 12, 2018
Oct 12, 2018 at 8:28 AM UTC
At a loss with what to tell
the children when they bring
their deformed beasts to me
I teach them the word menagerie as
they clear the project table and sweep
up cuttings from the kitchen floor.
We gather without you for another
stiff parade of animals, and I’m embarrassed
to mistake their swans for butterflies.
The sky aligns edge to edge,
a yellow sheet of cellophane,
the afternoon cut and creased
and folded like fractal creature:
a crane inside
a crane inside
a crane.
Oct 5, 2018
Oct 5, 2018 at 4:21 PM UTC
I
I stole my brother’s car and drove to Phoenix in the dark.
The blue-green glow of dashboard gauges, the biting scent
of roadkill and desert marigolds. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Insects slapping the windshield, incipient rain.
Keep driving. Drive until the sun blooms.
II
Some days were more dire than others. CCTV footage confirms
I pawned a shotgun, a Gibson guitar, and my wife’s engagement
ring at the pawnshop next to Fatty’s Tattoo parlor on MLK Boulevard.
The typographically accurate Declaration of Independence
inscribed on my back also confirms this.
III
I ran the tilt-a-whirl at the Ashtabula county fair,
fattening up on fried Oreos and elephant ears,
twisting behind tent ***** with a one-armed
contortionist with strawberry-blonde hair.
IV
I derailed in a dive bar.
V
I disappeared in a city lit by lavender streetlights,
where buildings blotted out the stars and the traffic
signals kept perfect time. I picked through trash bins.
I paid for love with drugstore wine.
VI
I closed my eyes on a mountain road.
The sheriff extracted me from a ****** snowbank.
VII
I holed up for weeks in an oceanfront motel, dazed
by the roar of the breakers. Each morning I drew
back the curtains and lost myself
in the crisscrossing patterns of whitecaps,
the synchronous flight of sanderlings above the dunes.
I dreamed of dead horseshoe ***** rolling in with the tide.
VIII
The moon over my shoulder
tightened into focus like a spotlight.
One night the barking dogs undid me.
I caved in to the candor of a naked mattress.
I grew my beard, an insomniac in a jail cell,
clinging to bars the color of a morning dove.
IX
I coveted the house keys of strangers.
X
I opened and closed many doors.
I sang into the mouths of storm drains.
I stepped out of many rooms only
to find myself in the room I just left.
Despite all my leaving, I remained.
Sep 21, 2018
Sep 21, 2018 at 1:45 PM UTC
We don’t dance here anymore.
We balance on wobbly stools
and order PBRs with whiskey backs,
sidestepping the looks we tend to give
each other in the mirror behind the bar.
Tonight is Christmas Eve again.
Again, tonight is Christmas Eve.
Reflected in a frosted window
framed by multicolored lights,
our waitress wears a miniskirt
and candy cane-striped tights.
Her laugh rings like the silver
bell of tomorrow’s hangover.
We are not the ones racking
another game of eight-ball
or feeding the jukebox or
tossing darts at the wall.
That’s not us, the hipster couple
exchanging sardonic repartee,
clever tattoos comingling as
they trade kisses in the corner.
Could that ever have been us?
Here is where we *****
it up and tamp it down.
Here is where we wait
for our future to finish
its careful unwrapping.
Here is where we say
thank you and drown,
tangled together in
ribbons of twilight.
Dec 22, 2017
Dec 22, 2017 at 4:55 PM UTC
Burnt toast and
a spot of blood.
Father dresses for work
and leaves with a wave,
his gabardine suit
the exact same shade
as the storm cloud blooming
on the back of his left hand.
After breakfast, mother pins
his undershirts to the wash line,
clothespins clenched
between broken teeth.
From my upstairs window,
I watch his shirts stiffening
in the flinty December air,
a chorus of white flags,
obsequious and clean.
Mother recovers in the laundry room,
where the floor is dusted with feeble
grains of spilled detergent.
I spend the afternoon
preparing for the sound
of tires crunching on gravel,
for the sweep of headlights
across the lawn.
There are plans
and maneuvers
to arrange.
Counterattacks.
Even now, the snow
on the side of the road
has turned to the color
of my childhood.
Nov 20, 2017
Nov 20, 2017 at 4:18 PM UTC
We are watching the clouds
bandage an incarnadine sky,
we are practicing our best knots,
weaving an army of tourniquets,
we are slow-dancing
barefoot on the edge
of a razor.
We are watching
a demolition derby
in the driving rain,
the smell of motor oil
mixing with gasoline,
the hard melancholy
of dying machines.
We are waltzing from room to room,
smearing our names on the floor,
we are keeping time to slow music,
bleeding out behind closed doors.
Nov 7, 2017
Nov 7, 2017 at 8:15 AM UTC
She left me with nothing but math.
Bedroom walls miscalculated
to the color of a bruised plum.
Sheets tangled into
isolated geometries.
Even the nightgown
hung on the closet hook—
its three buttons, opaline,
an insoluble equation.
And the moonlight,
subtracting itself across the floor,
proves distance by degrees:
light slanting
in the hallway,
the acute angles
of an open door.
Sep 7, 2017
Sep 7, 2017 at 11:43 AM UTC
The dogs are long gone.
The children of catastrophe
flick their knives at the sun,
shuffling from ruin to ruin
in their parents’ heavy boots,
stepping over the skeletons
of buildings and hummingbirds.
The children of catastrophe whet
their blades on barren slates.
They shave their heads
and argue about the history
of chandeliers and satellites.
The frogs at the water’s edge
expand into dumb balloons.
Hunted by an army of toothless men,
the children scramble toward the sound
of one dog barking at the edge of the world.
They sleep in shifts,
cursing moonlight.
We scavenge the stillness
between bullet and bone.
In our dreams,
the horizon binds us
with a blinding flash—
your hand in mine,
our cells married
and incandescent:
each to each,
ash to ash.
Aug 25, 2017
Aug 25, 2017 at 2:58 PM UTC
A close read
reveals that
I am nothing
but a rough draft
riddled with
misspellings—
a work in progress
watered down by
superfluous adjectives,
non sequiturs, and
smothered verbs.
Love is an editor.
She courts me
with a pocket of
sharpened pencils,
blue and red.
She marks me
up meticulously—
dele, stet
dele, stet.
Decades punctuated
by intermittent edits.
Sunlight slanting
through an hourglass.
Her hair as white
as the final page.
When the end comes,
will she love me enough
to give me another pass?
Jul 21, 2017
Jul 21, 2017 at 11:33 AM UTC