Meeting Your Plane

The night nurse plane that ferried you home
Pulled covers of high desert blue over
The unmade bed of the day, careless meringue
In the rearview mirror, sanctification ahead
Drifting in the back pew of the cellphone lot
Dancing embers of arrivals and departures
From some distant bonfire where we huddle
Beneath a harvest moon, stars and planets
Skating holding patterns on a black ice pond.

Drawing 101

I wonder if I hung
onto that self-portrait from
my first college art class

peering into a mirror
contour line in pencil
student grade sketch bond.  

Dave Barr
would have to be what
in his seventies by now?

my first acquaintance
with a practicing artist
one with a studio and ideas

that woke him up early.
The twist I recall was
to render one’s face

forty years on
warts and all
as they say.  

As if by magic
I’ve arrived suddenly
at my destination

one I predicted  
using only line to map
sagging jowls, face etched and a nose

grown to epic proportion.  
At least that’s how
I remember it

a masterpiece of draftsmanship
that captured the soul
of its subject, a man rendered

in short hand, gaze
bewildered when I was going
for bemused detachment.

Sycamore

Three syllables
No less pleasing
Rolling off

The tongue, yet
Possessing
A soupcon

Of economy more
Being four
Letters lighter

Dense as devils food
Lacking elbow room
Between the last

Two beats
Ninety feet
Bottom to top

Eighty
Odd years
Young and leaning

Against
Our house
Telltale

Leg of a timid
Giant trying
To squeeze himself

Into a moment
Ragged leafy breathing
Giving him away

English Plane
My tree guy
Says sideways so

We crane
Our necks
Squinting

Up at undeniable
Quiet dignity
Where shabbiness

Once prevailed
Rule Britannia! shading  
All of our tomorrows.

A White Man’s Prayer

Lord send me a champion
inarticulate as a mouthful
of scalding gumbo, smart

as two left shoes, windier
than a kettle of my Uncle Larry’s
chili, one who talks

tough around the silver
spoon in his mouth
sane as an *****

grinders monkey, a real
Yankee Doodle Dandy
plenty handy with the girls

honest as the day is long
in Lapland in December
an hombre who knows

how it feels to be top rail
at breakfast, bottom rail
by bedtime, big hearted

to his legions of lessors
his betters nothing more
than vicious rumor, Lord

knows my first choice
Yosemite Sam
is also a cartoon.

Pendleton Shirt

Wool that never wears out  
Plaids welcome in any circle
Pockets shingled with ***** and tails
That stay tucked no matter what
Yours smelling of lanoline
Mixed with gasoline
Sweat broken unloading
Imperials in Wheeling
Dried salt scrim by Akron
Heroic buttons
Holding back the minor
Planet of your belly
Satin labels stitched  
Into elliptical orbits of collars
Shirts found
Sagging on hangers
At the end of the day
Exhausted from their work
Concealing the contours
Of a hounding emptiness.

Dig

We were nearly back to the house
when the front end loader shattered
the silence and back filled the hole
drove off some vireos and cowbirds

amped up seven whitetail browsing
the pine break above Calusa Way.
American Spirit *******
a new moon **** of mouth

the operator feathered the lever
while gathered together we grazed
potato salad, deviled eggs, sliced ham, rain
from the Gulf over to Melbourne

soaking the operator’s boots
ducking into his pickup truck
for the long drive home to Pedro.
It hammered the tin roof shed  

out back where your tools
tarps, trouble lights, line trimmer
home brew insecticide in unmarked
milk jugs, old spark plugs

a lifetime of nuts, bolts and washers
huddled warm and dry on shelves
ball peened the tamped sand lozenge
on the ragged fringe of the silent ranks.

It’s hard to find even with a map
Calusa Way coiling through the bahia grass
flowing past stone faced theater goers
house lights up well past their final act.  

Vireos and cowbirds
even the whitetail browsing
the pine break pay me no
mind down on hands and knees

undoing the honest work
of the operator, sifting handfuls
of sandy backfill for something
I might have missed.

Beach Glass

Wrap your hand around
beach glass in your pocket
seafaring meteorite washed
up from another galaxy
cool lozenge squeezed
by degrees from deep
within the shoulder of a wave
eased glistening onto sand
glint of sunlight driving
a splinter through your eye  
the hollow of your palm
exquisitely matched
sculpted seed ordained
sea vast on your tongue
in holy communion
body and the blood bottled
in blown green glass
a sign cast up
from the belly of a whale
or nothing more
than a world weary
vagabond drawn
to this lightning kissed beach
fused skeletons of sand
writhe in recognition.

Sunset

Viking pyres sinking
by degrees from North Manitou
annealing the portside window

on an overnight flight to Dublin
spilling dye downtown high
above the left field bleachers

finger painting suburban skies
of my childhood racing
to beat the streetlights

floating fire on Lake Superior
too many times to count
Malibu two nights one July

sashaying drunk on magenta  
going off to pout in the dark
when I called you a show off

you’ve seen me at my worst
I know all your florid secrets
little wonder we’ve grown

to resemble one another
incandescent palettes leached
wicking gunmetal horizons.

Sixth and Alexander

A temporal fold
at the northeast corner
I never bother

to map, a cleft, benign
despite the dogs  
lingering skittishness,

we slip inside
to drain off all
but the moment

shed this load
our house a yellow beacon
through a veil.

Red

Open Jeep
That raptured us to the bottom of
Cherokee Hill

Aunt Shirley’s
face, nails, her flip flops, elastic
band that

barely tamed
her whipping hair, weeping  
bead work

my knee aflame
reopened on blacktop
only minutes

before sirens
split the sun ripe afternoon
Red

Bank
Baptist Church at the apex of a blind
curve

Beetle
helpless on its back, cans of
Bud

scattered
empties, some full ones
church key

perhaps
thrown clear with the passengers
blood

pooling
beneath the pinioned driver
everything

except the snow
white sheet I could not help
but imagine

drawn gently
over my astonished
fevered face.

Free Range

Insurrection or some dereliction
a latch left dangling or machinations
long in the works, The Salt Lick Plot

perhaps, freed you from *******
tyranny of the **** cup, cold
hand of Big Ag, you were left

ambling wild eyed and stricken
by the world’s delights and horrors
delivered wholesale at a stroke.  

Watching you in the rearview
engulfed in my dust, enameled eyes
white as roadside diner crockery

I had a moment of envy green
as new mown hay that evaporated  
with the mighty pull of the barn

headlong return to your contented
ways, well-worn confines for me
the path back a song I know by heart.

Tableau

A cheddar wheel of morning sun
Grates up against the window screen
To curl in whorls into the room
Where side by side we sleep displayed
On shiny continental pins  
Rorschach pairs of papery wings
Masking luminescent sifted rind
Silhouettes nestled deep in drifts.

Trinity

Three times
I’ve seen them
crossing the yard
but three weeks ago
led leashed by the dog
to the solemn Norway spruce
that celebrates mass
and blesses her gifts
her third offering that morning.

Enamel blue sky
after a three day snow
precise transverse incision
above the southern horizon
inscribed by a thieving sun
that pockets the night
in minute slivers
we’ll never miss.  

Motor drone
born full term
into silence
triplets
soothing themselves
a low hymn sung in one voice
graces the frame
at three o’clock
tacking west to skirt the zoo.

Slender as books
of stillborn poems
wing spans a third or better
the length of each slippery
yellow lozenge
nosing ahead
through alphabets
of airy verse hacked
to pieces in prop wash.

Details, details
devil detained at the boarding gate
pilots banking for their final run
feathering sticks
dipping wings
in watery sunlight
haloed crosses peeling off
one two three
the dog and me
retracing our steps
one short of a triumvirate.

Vieques

Snakes were here by the grace of God, but
knowing Him, He set them down while He fiddled
with an Egyptian plague, forgetting where He’d left them.

The Navy brought mongooses to eat the snakes
so they could relax and shell the sunrise coast in peace
but mongoose got to eat, as any chicken farmer will tell you.  

Spain sent Church and State astride the horse, but conquistador and cleric
dismounted to take in a sunset from ***** Arenas while the sea breeze
whispered soft and sweet to a restless stallion and his starry eyed mare.  

Ticks in the grass, indifferent to bombs, bitter on mongoose tongue
bloated equestrians each every one, blithe captives of nothing
but the cold blue Atlantic and the turquoise bath of the Caribbean Sea.  

Bored by the endless cycle of creation and destruction, inspired perhaps
to beauty or by niggling guilt, God unveiled the egret, elegant in its simplicity
with a taste for tick and a knack for lazy symbiosis.  

The Malecón sways with rhythms we won’t bring back in our carry-on’s, a drink
down the road from the old United Fruit Company dock, short stroll to sugar house
ruins, unhurried drivers nodding to afro-son, waiting for horses to make their way.

Roger Angell In Central Park

My wife was game to change
direction when I wondered
out loud if you were the man

on the bench in the sun
minding his own business
beneath a Mets cap, perhaps

contemplating yet another
major league season or
daffodils and Spanish bluebells

blooming on Cedar Hill
enjoying his solitude on a fine
spring morning much like my

long dead father glimpsed
moments before basking
shirt off in the Sheep Meadow

the sanctity of privacy
and nothing more
I tell myself, steering us  

across the 79th Street Traverse
toward the teeming refuge
of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Driving In Ireland

Try buttering toast with a tulip
on horseback.  Skittish nag, twisted chaps,
flogging a slice, reins in your teeth,
waving a battered Black Parrot  
heading a slow parade.

Father Mckenzie  

Turk’s Head teased my shadow
free last evening along the arroyo

our separation minute yet
edging toward the clement lip

accruing like the thunder eggs
I keep in a jar by the door

God long since departed, drifted
away on the high desert wind

that drew us here long ago
rifled pages of the Book Of Common Prayer.

A sodden breeze from home last night
a tang of salt, a churchyard hush

low plaint of cello’s lurking around
these adobe walls for a way inside

my callow words returned to claim
their hollow sound and mouth

all that was left unsaid
an old man darning socks

in the night when nobody’s there
crossing the room to leave

the door ajar to old sermons
bible black sky pierced with diamonds.

Coffin

Building your own coffin is
more complicated than a bread box
Spruce Goose without a wing span
a pine box to rile the neighbors

like chainsaw sculpture or
an un-ironic ark.  
If the dying carpenter/essayist
is half as good at working

wood as writing, burning
it will almost be a shame,
the carefree hours scavenging
weathered boards, whine

of the joiner/planer, heavy cream
bead of wood glue oozing
the length of mated seams
firm embrace of pipe clamps.  

I read again his thoughts
on hand sanding, how rounding
edges helps put things in perspective.

“I have loved the stars too fondly
to be fearful of the night”, a line
from a poem by Sarah Williams

what better choice
for inside the lustrous lid?
  
Perhaps I’ll try my hand
at bookshelves, a kayak
from wafer thin strips of cedar

but a coffin, a poem
for inside the hand rubbed lid
getting the words just right
could take the rest of my life.

Brushwork

If I were a jazz pianist I would pay
my dues in one lump sum on a tip
from some country singer on his way

down who gives me the shirt off his back
a Nudie with piping and plenty
of rhinestones that catch the stage

lights just so and sweep in reflection
across the polished planes of my 1890
rosewood Steinway Grand Modal C

a beaut with a pedigree, one I won’t fail
to mention from the stage in the second set
during the pause between How High The Moon

and I Love The Life I Live from behind
a bobbing cigarette, sharing the remarkable
fact that this is the very same piano

Mose Allison played in a two night stand
at the Blue Note in 1962.  Later I’ll work Jimmy
the trumpet player’s name into a tune and trade

winks with the guy on upright bass
the drummer slack jawed oblivious, lost
to us all in some very tasty brushwork.

Family Tree

They come from far and wide
once a year to mingle and snack
on catered shrimp and small talk

in the long line that snakes around
the room to the open bar besieged
five deep, the beating heart

of the party until the string band
starts up and everyone hits
the dance floor, limbs loose,

knees high, hair down, skirts hiked
generations of farmers and drifters,
rail men and conscripts, schemers

and failures, a cacophony of native
brogue and broken English, long
lazy vowels stretched to breaking.  

The men have my nose, the women
your eyes, but neither you nor I claim
the crazy cackle coming from

a skinny gal with electric
hair or the flat, vacant gaze of
a fellow in coveralls,

hands like hay rakes, yellow
fingers balled into fists.  The bar
closes at twelve, they start to drift  

away, arms draped, propping each other
up, telling the same old tearful tales,
falls down wells, battle axes

to the head, starvation in alarming
numbers and many iterations of
pox and croup, ague and catarrh,

bilious fever, dropsy and the flux,
melancholia, milk leg and screws,
a miserable game of one-upmanship

savored by all as they disappear
into the night, fore-bearers eyeing
us at the door, polite yet taciturn,

playing things close to the vest
mum on the matter of the higher
branches of our family tree.

Orangutan

I dreamed of trees last night, slow sunlight
liquor seeping through stacked canopy
to pool amber in low places, bending

to my reflection, look of arch surprise
fading into ******* shadows, cast
black shell curing at twilight, blanketing

the leaf wrack, pooling about my matted
autumn robe, sending me to the highest
limbs, my long arms elegant paired levers.

One Night, Late Summer

The Harvest Moon presides
but won’t presume a pledge
despite imploring wood smoke
in spite of homing embers
rising to swarm a Janus face
waxing luminous as a loupe of cream
a weather eye on waning yet to come
willing to look the other way
while I haul on this lasso
your upturned eyes
enameled in buttery gleam.

The Party’s Over

First Ray of Sunlight bangs on the front door,
mop and bucket, green disinfectant, God knows
she’s seen much worse.  Start with Giuliani
broom his shriveled heart, pour bleach in the dank dark
corners of his soul, load Newt onto a cart but
come back for Christie, got to watch the back.
Spray all the baseboards, maybe tent and bomb,
bag up all the empties, filthy bottles of ignorance,
butts of hate floating in the dregs.
Open the curtains, let in the light, watch them scuttle
for the drain, don a hazmat suit and head upstairs
“The Donald” lolls in bed tangled up in stinking
sheets of free media coverage, bedding soiled with a bladder
full of lies and self-regard.
The rest of us will slink out the back, Lord knows
we enjoyed the bread and circus, we love a good carnival
geek when he bites the heads off chickens.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant but this
may require gasoline and match.

Degas’s Shoulders

draw the eye
to rolling landscape

bald

above
blue tree line or
interrupted by
crenellated hedgerow
daubed with a satin butterfly

poised

to dry her wings
before clearing a rise
of clavicle
countryside set alight
where I wander
lost amid familiar landmarks.

Cake Lover

Icing peaks a pillowed top,
shingles this creamy carousel
layers press and oozing
awaiting my trailing finger.

I blow out your candles,
licking each one clean
to the wick, rising wishes
mingled with smoke.

Dirt Daubers

They float in and out all day
long on low interest wings
cramped toes of abodes
accreting like tamped syllables
compressed into lines, bellow
bad things about the mothers of their
fellows from laced lattice work
**** like champs in the bushes
hip sprung and hands free
while I ignore the noise and hunch
over muddy simile, worry
concentric rings of rhythm  
into pages of imperfect tubes
just waiting for habitation.

Tacking

Keel laid long ago, deck
where we stand at night
naming stars, worn salt
smooth and clocked
by the shadow of the mast
our ship trailing
veils of memory, smartly
parting swell, tacking
true from high up in the rigging
where I mend sails
with the thread of a tune
while you pitch
seams, humming
something old and familiar.

Wishbone

Holding things down
on my end, calibration
the name of the game
purchase gained and lost
longing for your exquisite
exertions palpable
the length of this delicate glyph
grace and menace
in equal measure
on display across the bight
floored by your gaze
play of three fingers against
your effortless pinch
my feigned contortions
leavened by a finning
hand to ward off
the snap of lesser wishes.

A Good Set of Bicycle Lights

Strap white to the handle bar
red to the seat post

of your worrisome bicycle
                         a fixed gear nightmare, these nighttime

streets lay in wait while I lay waiting to be pierced
by the call that never comes
with a bit of luck.

Old light from distant stars
at the edge of my
galaxy of fear

arrives as pinpricks of reminder
your new orbit free
                                of my nettlesome gravity.

A Good Set of Bicycle Lights

Strap white to the handle bar
                             red to the seat post

of your worrisome bicycle
                            a fixed gear nightmare, these nighttime

streets lay in wait while I lay waiting to be pierced
           by the call that never comes
       with a bit of luck.

Old light from distant stars
                       at the edge of my
                            galaxy of fear

arrives as pinpricks a reminder
                       your new orbit free
                                of my nettlesome gravity.

Our Science Film

Autumn colors leave me
Pining for black and white
Grammar school reel to reel
Science films snaking through
Rackety Cold War projectors
Chalk motes swarming
Cones of gibbering light
Can-do voice-overs
Always a hiccup off
Read by radio men
Sporting pale miens
Pie plate headphones
Brylcreem slick
Perhaps a Scholastic
Short featuring winsome
Child actors playing
You and me
Button noses
Wrinkled in stricken
Joy at a baby bunny
Wide eyed and stock still
In an apple crate
Beneath an apple tree
Leaves schooling in binary
Shimmer on the summer
Breeze blowing through our film
An introduction to photosynthesis
Or the metamorphosis of caterpillars
It matters little to you
Beribboned in gingham
Or me flying flapping
Dungarees
Platinum hair
Whipping our faces
Sky a china white
Behind ivory billows
Framed forever
Dimpled and laughing
Milkweed exploding
From our fingers like secrets
Shared in alabaster
Sign language.

“He also saw the cook’s cat which could do somersaults.”  

At least that’s what the cook said,
a claim the cat, shapeless sack
of snide, deigned neither to confirm

nor deny, content to ****
long afternoons in desultory

elongation, stationed
on the window sill above
the blackened eight burner Garland.

Once, when the cook stepped outside
to smoke, the cat, mood sour,

expansive, airily confided
the corpulent cook could climb
stairs on his hands while whistling

“Parlez-Moi d’Amour”
then spat in the soup, dispelling

any lingering incredulity,
his stomach duly nailing
a flawless double backflip.

Catch

Eternal summer spent back peddling
on your lofted rocket
through leafy canopy
teeming careless at the ragged
edges on slender stems, chastened
by autumn pooling gold while I wade
gloved through swirling eddies
engulfing parked cars
losing the ball against chalk
white skies stricken with dripping
black lattice, misjudging
the parabolic frown while robins
hawk spring like it was something
new and improved
snagging the ball
on the run, in the webbing, at the curb
sun spackled and off my stride
for the return throw
taking time to plant my feet and read
the Braille of stitching
your farewell note
with post script
to tell me you remembered
to pack your glove.

My Answer To A Request By Rosanne Cash To Sit In For A Performance At The Rubin Museum Of Art

I’m flattered of course
but I must confess
I don’t play guitar
or a wind instrument  
the nylon strings of the Silvertone
I practiced on
a cats cradle beneath
my fumbling fingers
the school trumpet
that always left me
kind of blue.  
Let me be up front about
my limited vocal range
pathetic inability to carry
a tune in a bucket amplified
by a fear of public speaking
a crippling shyness going back
to my peripatetic youth.  
But I can see you won’t take
no for an answer, not surprising
you, daughter of the Man In Black
me, a man possessed
of subtle dormant talent
waiting only for a spotlight
stool and tambourine.

Miller Moth

Promises were made
that dress of yours
yellow as a Miller moth
batting about the bulb
of a painted porch light
yearning on hanger
to caress a ***** of shoulder
ride a swell of hip
bell the well-turned ankle.
Pleat and dart pooled about
first one foot
then the other
rose to lip
a halting smile of neckline
assumed an aspect
of sail gathered wind
sung vows in the rigging
where I madly batted  
drawn, ensnared.

Brief Affair

Word was things had grown  
Stale between them
Sleek as she is
Him handy in a tight spot

But the other night
When I flipped
On the bathroom light
I found them trading

Tangent points on the vanity
Bristles deeply meshed
Handles lightly touching
The envy of those two

Coffee lovin’ Joe’s in the kitchen
Spotted later side by side
In the sink, rims stealing
A figure eight kiss of infinity

Sharing a bit of undergarment
Gossip, a rumored stowaway
Discovered fresh
From the dryer burrowed

Within a pair of my own.
Hell, I wore them that way
Who am I to judge
Their brief affair.

Spice Rack


I will make eggs in the morning
coffee in the cold back room
windows on the feeders
epicenter of an explosion
of birds on film run
forward and backward
a mad scramble of egg layers
iron skillet butter crack and whisk yes
to toast salt and pepper in shakers
simple gifts a hymn to a humble meal  
yet the spice rack hums with fiery powders
waiting for the chance to ignite
the rocket of our morning  
crushed red pepper curry cayenne chili’s bristle
but alas cumin just a pinch my hand
stayed a cook wise to incendiary breakfast.

Dreaming Bob Wills

Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys performed
my life in a six song set in Tulsa
in late forty-seven.  Only a dream but they swung
through San Antonio Rose and Don't Be Ashamed of Your Age,
Tiny, Kelso, Smokey, Johnny and Herb playing it
*****, *****, Tommy crooning
my ups and downs and Bob,
who put a fine point
on an uneven performance
with his running commentary of high “ahh ha's”.

Work History

I lucked into my first job
building four-letter radio station
call signs from tangled bins
of consonants and vowels.  

In those days it was
all done by hand.

Sharp corners on the F’s kept you
on your toes, O’s easy to bobble
when you got careless, “slot four,
out the door!”, a newbie mnemonic

forever lodged in my brain.  
I bided my time on the K line

until a spot opened on the W,
the graveyard shift.  It paid
a little more, the hours going
toward my Creative License.

It was the seventies. We chewed
betel to stay awake during long

classical station runs then punched
out woozy, blind in morning sun,
fingers bleeding, teeth stained red.  
Top forty, we popped ‘em out

like biscuits and squirrelled
away X’s to slip onto the ends

of freeform formats, small acts
of defiance.  I quit to avoid prosecution,
nabbed sneaking parts out
in my pants, one letter at a time,

building words, paragraphs, whole
stories in my basement.

Paul Irving Precedes Me

It’s been said we process through life
leading our own parade, fronting
our second line, wielding a flaming baton

igniting black powder twists to toss
at cheering throngs, though truth be told
I prefer metaphor with less pizazz

something a bit more staid and buttoned
down, protocols clear.  As I make my way
I wish to be preceded by Paul Irving

a stern, eagle beaked fellow,  
House Sergeant-At-Arms, a man given
to regular habits, a guy who knows

exactly where we’re headed and how
to get there.  Paul can be relied upon to
part the waters, stem the flood of

well-wishers with which I must
contend every day, dragging me by my
lapels, bald head pivoting, eyes steely,

scanning the room for trouble, alert to
roadblocks, those bent on delay, keen
to deliver me to my final address.

Globe

A globe would be nice
By this open window
Morning pushing in on the hip
Of spring, warm from slow
Dancing against the screen
Straining the grating weave
Sifting down on the table
Settling on the milky lens of my coffee
Feathered in delicate drifts
Outline of a hand
The one I’m waving
In the air in a way
Robins might mistake
For dismissiveness
Viewed from the teeming lawn
Unaware of this imaginary globe
I spin unabashedly  
Blister of the Atlas Mountains
Scattered braille of Micronesia
Over and over, again and again
Beneath the palm of my hand
Haiphong Harbor
Hot on the heels of sprinting Havana
The world in seamless rotation
On the table of a minor god
Eyes closed waiting for you
To come round again, finger
Poised and aching above
A lonely blue planet.

Breaker Bar

Every now and then I get the itch to lift
The simple slender breaker bar in my hands
Snap a socket on the square pivot fitting

And go hunting for a big fat frozen bolt
One that hasn’t budged in ages, rust bound
Threads that yearn to give held fast by a split

Spiral washer, tense marriage of wedge
To pent up tension for no other reason
Than to feel the sheer unbridled joy

That comes from applying Archimedes
Law of the Lever, poised to deliver
A stunning verdict proclaimed with a sharp

Dry crack that travels through my hands  
My arms to light up some forgotten
Constellation in a dark and dusty

corner of my brain, closing a circuit
That began with the simple slender
Breaker bar, bequeathed but rarely wielded

A conjure stick to summon you back to
Throw your weight around, tip the scales in my
Favor, balanced absurdly here on the business end.

A Small Autumn Landscape

On last evening’s walk
through a picture of town
careful to keep
to harrowed strokes
mindful of losing our way
in unresolved scumble
we had a brush
with skinning paint
how else to explain
morning coat sleeves
laden as a honeybee’s legs
Sixth past Main
a good chunk of Fourth
defaced in a leisurely smear
constellation of city lights
bled into wet pavement.
You broadcast a hand
toward a break in the clouds
tatting the rim of the moon
your pillow beaded with creamy light
a few luminous grains
still clinging to your face.

Crime Scene
(Flint, Michigan)

Yellow cordon tape hums
low in a stiff breeze off
Saginaw Bay
a norther that scatters
empty evidence markers
up and down Miller Road
eddies on Dupont Street
uncapped and droning.
Tennyson, Bishop and Frost
lost for words
this morning working
my way through a pallet of water
dead poets urgent
as blue sky box kites
specks above a crime scene
easing the truck past
houses of the common
abandoned down Whitman
transcendence, surely
for those forbearing souls
over on Emerson.

Tig Coili

Gerry Mulholland sings
I come looking for a job
but I get no offers
just a come on from the ******
on Seventh Avenue
from a table top
on a borrowed guitar while
Johnnie Mullins adds in on
button accordion and harmony
rhyming ****** with Dewars
so soft so sweet whats left
to be done but smile
into this glass of Redbreast.

Medical History

I believe it was Churchill who said
History is written by the victors
delivered, one imagines, dryly with

a dash of pith, an ounce or two of gin,
words clipped and formed in the space above
his derbied chalk hill dome from gathering

clouds of ominous blue cigar smoke,
veddy proper, tickety-boo and all
that rot.  A life insurance policy

after all, read in a British accent
is boilerplate made sublime, all this
as I sit in the waiting room checking

off rows of little boxes, writing
my medical history, to be read
aloud in the event of my demise

by Englishmen; Bill Nighy on
the subject of my LDL levels,
Patrick Stewart breathing life into a

family penchant for colon cancer or
Gary Oldham giving a dignified
reading from the list of male fore-bearers

who’ve toppled headlong over the pale
clutching their chests.  Perhaps Steve Coogan
or some surviving Python could coax a

chuckle at the expense of my total
hip replacement, snatching victory from
the jaws of inevitable defeat.

Virginia Lee Burton

It’s all in there, a blueprint
for living, my sacred text

perfect replacement for a world
of tired hotel Gideon’s, this tale

of a plucky fellow with an Irish
surname, unencumbered, set free

to roam at will, picking up work here
and there, more hedgehog than fox, a man

who did one thing and did it well.  He
wrestled with private doubts in the dark,

stretched out on top of Mary Anne,
the nights warm and clear, sky smeared

with stars, a man who knew how to
back up a claim, take a risk, court failure

and humiliation at the bottom of a deep,
perfectly excised hole, all four corners

neat and square.  My idea of a perfect ending,
a second chance, a mulligan, quietly tending

the boiler with a pipe and a good book,
waiting for you and your homemade pie.

Mose Allison

Glottal blues sing song  
Dixie drawl behind beat, wry
as toast, work as play.

Learning to Ride

Now and again
on warm spring mornings
low on the drop bars
cadence clipped clean

fluid transfer of force
orbiting the sweet spot
flesh, bone, alloy mesh

senses trawl a teeming sea
I still feel your hand
on the back of my seat

ragged breath your
big feet slapping
pavement as you release me
to the current, anchored

hands on knees while I recede
downstream pedaling
furiously beyond your reach.

Spider Hatch

Charitable in her critique
my hope this morning
soap in eyes, steam
rising to buffet
the asterisk
on the ceiling
that qualifies a tepid
first impression or
dispatches me with a silken
“it’s much worse than I thought.”