Every Day Poets (Online) Dec. '08

Outside The Inn

There would, of course, have to be a star
—as there always is— but
only a single star, luminous

beckoning above the merest shelter.
Around the meager dwelling,
its wattle daubed with ordinary

midnight, there would of course be
shepherds, nodding, and music of
sheep bells a softly ringing lullaby.

There would have to be an angel.
The sky, a clear intoxicant, would
open and the angel would sing

and the shepherds, keeping their sheep
would have to spread the word
and be certain.

Every Day Poets Online (NOV '08)

Critic

He likes to say
he likes her like
he likes blueberries
on his cornflakes
and he’s always quick
to rave about the blueberries

The Orange Room Review Online (Oct '08)

On Tour With The Percussives

Every nook held its gong, its cowbell
tabla, tamboura, tom-tom, conga, guiro
and that was all we ever knew
except for how the landscape scrolled
past the tinted windows, lights
in little houses in tiny towns
well before dawn on the fringe
of the city, no one up but us,
not even the paperboys. We’d
hear the rev-down, feel the bus
decelerate, suffer the first tug
of gravity, re-enter atmosphere, peer
out at the still-dark garage,
the unlit pumps waiting, sway
slightly when the brakes squeaked,
unaccustomed as we were
to stationary objects.

This was always the golden moment:
stepping off the bus onto pea-stone,
sunrise still an hour beyond horizon,
all the air in every direction pregnant,
everything only about to happen;
we’d share a quiet smoke and
listen to our heartbeats, rehearsing.

Stirring (Online) Jan '08

The Great Awakening

Oily America swims in a red sea
while we sleep. In the morning, the news
is grim; is no news, really; is only more
of what we have come to expect:
the buffed and baritone correspondent,
straight faced, numbly earnest
telling us Jim, the news death tonight death
from death this death city is
death is all around us and we fear fear
we miss our mothers and everywhere we look
is blood and destruction, Jim,
and that’s about the sum of it
from here in deathville;
back to you in the studio. Jim?
and Jim goes right on reading
the market reports and the weather
and the story about the farmer
who raised a gigantic potato
as smart as the President but
kinder and gentler; and all about
the elections and campaigns
all across America to have Jesus
back in the classroom, Christ
returned to Christmas, churches
to be the agency for insuring the poor,
and so on and so forth until, finally,
finally, finally hot young Jessica’s tits appear
at halftime, the cheerleaders take the field
and all’s right with the world again,
praise the lord.

THE ANTHOLOGY OF NEW ENGLAND WRITERS (20th Edition) (PRINT) Nov '07
(Editor's Choice; Robt. Penn Warren Free Verse Contest)

Table For One

I never heard anyone shout so loud
so softly. Barely a tabletop away
I couldn’t hear a word she said
but I could see him sitting as she spoke,
could see his hands move from his lap
to a clasp, almost as if in prayer
before him, between them; could see
his face, and read the awful truth:
that she’d said it all before,
a million times or more, and said it now
one last time before she said goodbye.
He had nothing left to consider but
empty hands and having, finally, heard.

EDGZ (#13) (Print) (October 07)

WHERE TO GO

It doesn’t really matter, does it,
once you’ve seen the Mall Of America
the abandoned tennis court
where Robert Frost learned to play,
no doubt enjoying the long volley
and scowling at any opponent
selfish enough to serve up an ace;
once you’ve walked down Elm Street
in someone else’s home town
and seen that Elm Street looks like
every other Elm Street, every other
elm-lined Main Street, every
tree-lined street in towns where
trees still line Main Street;
once you’ve looked into the eyes
of the diner’s late night waitress,
the eyes of the late night diners,
the eyes of the people up late at night
hungry for a stranger’s friendly look.
Everywhere you go, folks turn out
to root for the Buckeyes or the Jayhawks,
elbow their way into stadiums, turn up
along the parade route hours early, unfold
blue nylon chairs to get the best view, holding
cold beer in a blue cooler under a blue sky
or bury themselves in the beach sand and
worship the sun coming at them in waves
across the wide sky of another summer.
My friend Hatch used to say, “No matter
where you go, there you are. If you lived here
you’d be home now.” He thought he was
being funny. And he was being funny.
But it’s true. You’re home now.

Crescent Moon Journal (Online) Feb '06
(2nd place, Winter Poems Contest)

Cold Snap

Outside for obligatory photographs:
ubiquitous head-shot, profile,
three-quarter profile, bust.
I stand between the battered, rusty
plow, lost in a stand of spruce,
and the house’s winter windows,
nearly buried by blizzard. I squint
and will be squinting forever,
standing, frozen by the shutters.

When I see myself, inside, later,
at first only pixels, then paper thin,
I am several hundred pounds of meat
none of it lean, leaning on a cane,
a lame spectacle trapped by
reflex and bifocality, with snow
at the temple of my thinning hair.

Crescent Moon Journal (Online) May 05


Outbound

1.

It's hard to find you
gone tonight, outbound

among the stars, and I
wingless, without a song

under a dime like moon
look up from ice.


2.

I did not dream,
last night, the loose end

would ravel. Your departure
loomed. I held my breath

while you slept, tired,
tried to imagine you

far from these sheets
of snow, under another sky.

The Country Mouse (Online) Dec.04

Looking In

Fully banqueted,
the nicotine outcast
scavenges cigarettes poolside
while dregs of the party
sip Tanquerays with tonic
and linger over cheesecake.

Nothing is as blue as the pool.
The night, narcotic, welcoming,
lengthens; spreads itself out
behind a buttery August moon.

In the morning, huddled
over coffee, everyone is
blown dry by sunrise
and smells like almonds.



Thoreau Before Dawn

Four feels odd, I suppose,
except to those who rise at five
or, as a rule, at half-past five.

Most of us must toil and strive;
do not have the life we chose
so long ago, in which we’d doze,

in which we’d trust in God at least
to toss a piece of daily bread
our way, by which we’re barely fed.

But long and long before we’re dead,
we’ll know the nature of the beast:
we’ll trust ourselves, and starve, or feast.

THE COMSTOCK REVIEW (Print) Sept. 04

Fallen Away

I don’t know when it happened;
I let it all fall away. I let it fall

on the long drive to work in the morning
in the sunlight, let it fall crossing

ridge after jaded ridge, fall
with the glimpse of an unlikely hawk

or a capture of crows, or the stacking
of cordwood, the season’s final frost,

fog on the hillside, or the flutter
of a yellow kite in a midsummer wind.

Like the stones of the dead, untended
in the long grass in the middle of June,

in the middle of nowhere I let it fall,
left it all behind and disappeared,

slipped into seamless dreams, drifted
through blue nights and black mornings.

I watched the water boil for coffee,
sat by the river and watched the water

run away toward heaven, heard angels
whisper in the leaves, left the secret

undiscovered, saw the uncertain moon
swim, reflected in dark, starlit pools.

Gone, now, the last of all the wasted words;
the effort, senseless, of upward struggle.

MiPO Online Aug. '04

Beanman’s Paranoia

Hungry as a jungle cat and
loopy as a Chianti loon
the beanman and the wishy lady
come walking.
The beanman's convinced
the librarian's out to get him
but the wishy lady says no
it's just the moooooon
making tiiiiiides inside his head.

All the same, though,
in the back of her mind
the wishy lady knows it’s true:
you can never trust the librarian.


Reading The Entrails

Bernie had a hole in his belly
as big as your head
for a minute
and Carole Anne
had the sweetest lips
the longest legs
and the driest thirst
for Cuervo
as she slipped
into darkness
like Bernie
forever
but slower

I'm gonna be
lonely as hell
today
horny as hell tonight

JOURNAL OF NEW ENGLAND WRITERS (PRINT) Nov 03
(Honorable Mention; Robt. Penn Warren Free Verse Competition)

Samsara

Almost 20years later, I find the Buddha.
I know him instantly. Each of us has aged,
lugging around our bellies, and I, too, am bald.

I see him through the window. Even at night,
six horizons from home, even through a sheet
of glass in sheets of rain, I know him instantly.

I know how the Buddha was broken. I go in
and tell the man how the Buddha was fired
from the dense, black clay of the Barton River,

his cracked glaze an accident of temperature.
I tell the man the Buddha’s mostly clay and glue;
tell him that the Buddha, shattered, has fallen

time and again for the same reasons; fallen,
time and again a foolish, foolish Buddha.


THE WRITER'S HOOD (online) Aug '03:

I've Married The Fly

I should have been home
alone in the kitchen
heating and eating a burger
checking the blue flame
under the cast iron pan.
I should have been
watching the cheese melt
watching the marbled fat,
browned, sizzled into grease,
run down the side of the patty
like a lava flow off Mauna Loa,
infernal, inexorable, out
toward a flat black beach,
broiled from above and below.

I should have been thinking of you
but instead I've married the fly.



IDEA MUSEUM (online) June ’03:

Disappearance

While you are away, I go out
into the sunless morning.
The door that closes behind me
closes forever. The house is an echo
and the vacant windows reflect
the flat grey-brown mulch in your gardens.
I have nowhere to go
but I get into the car and drive.

All the signs are stopsigns
People in the village stop, stare
as I pass, seeing only half of me.



Cow Myth Exposed
Even when the second city had its fire,
clearly, they experienced it first-hand.
The library was the first go. A homeless man,
smoking in the stacks, his clothes already smoky,
fell asleep amid the news of Euclid, the history
of shape, and dreamed of conflagrations, of ash
rising on waves of superheated air, then became it.
It was hard to tell the place from Alexandria.


Under Glass: Fears Her Horse

Nothing reminds us of you now
and nothing remains but these:
a small stone adze
and a scrap of buckskin boot.
It is recorded only
that you sat near fires
but not that you felt the snow.
Your sandstone bowls are gone,
broken by the sun;
you have taken them with you
to an endless spring
beyond that far blue mesa.


MOONDANCE (online) Jan 03:

Janey At Five Below

Janey leaves alone
what she’s left behind. A door,
closed, remains closed.
Dark remains dark
and Janey does not linger
long enough to fix the blame.

Janey breathes
a slashing, glassy air. She
stands, transfixed, wreathed;
her own breath her only halo.



ANTHOLOGY OF NEW ENGLAND WRITERS (print) Nov 02:

Plains Bless The Newcomer

The fortune of finding a keyring
after having been given the keys:
shining ring on the sunny sidewalk
at the bus stop; and the driver, friendly;
these, and other blessings beside—
a yellow note, taped to my door near midnight,
Sandra, safe and away in The Windy City,
a fridge with a freezer that works---
these are the blessings of the plains,
and I am come to claim them all:
the countless thickets where the gray birds sing
the thunder, rolling through rolling hills,
the small, still lake where the water
holds the clouded sky upside-down, an
instant balanced on the promise of rain.



RAINTOWN REVIEW (print) Jun 02:

Invitation: The Shepherd To Join The Meager Flock

Climb on down, do.
We do not believe in gated air
nor find ourselves, chosen, unfolding
into welcomed and forgiving arms,
chastened and repentant. No. We are
too bold, always, and blind. Climb on down
to be among those who, nattering,
notice only the banquet’s crumbs; who
weave the lost threads of the Great Tapestry
into humble and ignorant cloth.



CONSPIRE (online) Aug 01:

Later She Said

Later she said
when you see her see if
she’s got those names right
see if she’s got that list
or the numbers reversed or
what was his name on the paper there
The doctor ought to know

See if she thinks
we should save it
if it’s red again or
check the list and see if
you can find out if she’s
waiting for the doctor
or she knows if I’m
having any pain or not

Tell her it’s red again
Tell her to tell the doctor it’s red



Betrayal

Othello is a small gray box beside the bed.
Two plastic tubes move air
from one place in the room
to another, but fail to inflate
useless, hungry lungs.
Late at night they lapse
and I am helpless,
lying in the dark,
listening
to mechanized promises
and the hiss of whispered lies.
I get up; move around the room
looking in the corners for morsels of sleep.
When I can breathe
I walk out to the desk
jot a few lines
about the death of Desdemona.



THE HIGGINSVILLE READER (print) May 01:

So Much Depends Upon A Red Wig

Ronald hasn’t shown
for several years now
since he came to cut the ribbon
and open the public doors;
has only sent an emissary
once or twice a month:
eighteen wheels and a logo
bearing frozen potatoes
and placemats or paper bags.

Manager Mike pines,
longs for a simple glimpse
of pancake, rubber nose,
or a pair of two-foot long
red plastic shoes.
He watches
his all-expenses-paid
managers’ incentive
Holiday in Cozumel
go south along Main,
turn left into Peking Gardens
while down the block, smirking,
his arch-enemy Wendy
serves Mike’s former regulars
with a vacant and Frosty smile.


POEMS NIEDERNGASSE (online) Feb 01:

Janey Misses Mister Right

Janey thinks back on aches
she remembers as
blades between shoulder blades,
sudden and sharp, electrified
tingle and shudder of
nerve impulses running
the length of her left side,
and the long flame of tendons
torn without warning.
Janey has that history.

She lets it wash over her
in the shower, lets it flood
her temples, invites it in
and feels the rush
of red again, lingering
like her last lover’s final touch.



MAELSTROM (print) Nov 00:

8/1

Tues. nite / Wed. am:
The prospect tonight of daylight tomorrow, the noises
on the second floor, the repetitive tiled hallways --
...it hurts, hurts.
Even deep Mingus on well-traveled tapes,
even Nocturnes no use, no use.
Bloody camel stubs in ashtray
1329 boulevard
can’t forget
bone pulled from bone, ancient practice, barbarism...

Another sun unwinds behind another smothered sky;
August opens slowly:
an ache of air impossible to breathe.

Ten before twelve. One into two goes soon,
Quick as a click.



PINE ISLAND JOURNAL (print) Oct 00:

Dream Farm

I want to have a farm he said
I want to make things grow
sun wind soil seed
the soft brown earth
the laugh-blue sky ---

Backache was all I could answer,
Downpour.
Wheels against the barn
rimmed with rust
the fallen gutterspouts
and all the grey and ancient boards
made echoes of agreement in the air.


ABLE MUSE (online) May 00:

The Most I Could Do

I watched: her breasts grow large
Her nipples swell her belly
Barge-like ferocious with child
Comes knocking
Like the moon at a midnight door
While angry he at home puked
and swore

Grudgingly she grew. He
Distracted, drunken, sunk
Beyond his own oblivion,
Telephones:
I don’t remember what / if he said:
The phone or he was nearly dead
or dead

And what could be said, then?
What could one say? The day is
Ended? The night is coming on?
What to do?
I offered her a cup of tea;
The most I could do: far more
than he.


LYNX EYE (print) May 00:
(Featured Artist: Three ‘Janey’ poems):

Janey

Janey’s boyfriend steers his goatee
and Metallica T-shirt down Main,
wishing he had leathers and a Harley.
From two to four, the empty ovens
bake only air, and Janey has to breathe.
Her mother’s echo recommends otherwise:
a simple change of shift, perhaps. Janey
simply shifts from foot to foot,
does not note the smallest change
from one sad jukebox world to the next.

Janey counts the empty booths again,
gathers herself near the window
considers the bars.


Janey Takes A Break**

Janey finds herself
in the furthest corner
of the darkest room:
everything there is cool.
She dreams of seamless days
and dreamless nights; she
trips in the hallway
under unlit lights and
sings to the tune
of untolled golden bells.

Janey gets lost in the attic
but she won’t come down:
everything there is, is cool.

**Subsequently published at Wicked Alice

Janey Waits At The Airport

Janey sits and listens
to arguments in Arabic
about the quality of water
on West Bank kibbutzim—
she takes no sides; finds
the contenders pointless,
the point of contention dry.

Janey reads other people’s poetry,
discovers dances beyond dizzy.
She borrows occasional phrases,
minces words and, sifting,
shifts an emphasis, deletes
a wasted measure, turns
the tune and, lifted, sings.


RED RIVER REVIEW (online) May 00:

Ms. Doe

She was old, so they beat her severely.
She was old: they kidnapped her,
drove her away stuffed in the back
of her own stolen car. She was old.
When she regained consciousness
they stabbed her repeatedly
with her own stolen steak knife
and dumped her on the roadside;
drove away, dreaming they were druglords.

She was old, so the wounds to her throat
and the wounds to her chest, and the wounds
to her face, and the wounds to her arms
will take ages and ages to heal;
and the scars that they left on her body
and the scars that they left on her mind
will last and last and last and last.


NEW WORKS REVIEW (online) Apr 00:

Crossing

The river sings of its rocks, mirrors
emerald and jade where summer
shadows attempt to outrun
sundown. I intrude, I presume,

I stand near the middle. The second cut
of hay is on the banks, neatly ordered
in rows this time of year, golden,
measuring the march-step toward August.

I think about changes: the movement
of sand through narrow places, how
a ripple diminishes downstream,
how a sound sounds when it stops.


Landscape

Wheeled glossy-wing’d and black
Corvus Cornix, Corvus Corax
to Home in golden Tamarack
this cold day in space & sad
when the sun goes down these hills

Merge here wood & water
inland, hillbound streams
dreaming driftwood beaches
along the forested seaboard;
Merge green & grey the conifer
and elm stands, gazing, down
where fine white waterlace
fans flat rockface & falls

Melancholy in this mist land
The Raven and The Crow

The Last I Heard

I’m rudderless tonight,
the forgotten lamb of visions,
(as clear as yesterday’s sky)
(as pointless as planets warring)
the Loch Ness Monster:
Nessitaris Rhombopteryx,
the loneliest of creatures.

The last I heard
you thought I hated you
but I’m only a madman in Coventry
staring up dumb at the Moon.

Mr. Procrastination Speaks:

Everything begins tomorrow. Stand by.