Inspiration

One Sentence Poems (Online) December 2017

Twice in a day and a half
he’s almost certain he hears it:
the voice of an angel speaking
from just around the corner
as if from some great distance
seeming almost lost in recitation
almost inaudible
telling some cosmic joke or
posing a celestial riddle,
repeating the words
hoodwink, subterfuge,
flabbergast.

So Much Depends Upon A Red Wig

Of Burgers & Barrooms (Print Anthology from Main Street Rag Bookstore, December 2017)
-- Originally Published by Higginsville Reader (print) May 2001


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.

Shelter

One Person's Trash (Online & Print) November 2017
-Previous version (Titled "Charlie") in *82 Review, March 2013

Charlie visits the Precious Savior

Bookstore, stocks up on all the latest 

offerings: Ticket To Heaven postcards, 

sticks of incense, The Greatest Hits 

Of The Grateful Faithful, featuring 

the Certain Resurrection Choir.  

He goes for a walk on Water Street, 

his head and headphones buzzing.  

 

Charlie folds himself into a corner,

contemplates nations murdering

nations.  He no longer aims or claims

to be a general; thinks instead about 

suicide, rain, and the sidewalks, running.  

Smoke rises near the airport, insubstantial,

like a ghost rises from a cooling corpse.
Charlie, airborne, cools his heels, thinks about

jets and vapor trails.

 

Back at the shelter, he’s got a fan                                                   

and a paint-by-number Jesus.

At night they find a little harmony:

the fan spins around and 

the room spins around and Jesus, 

pleased, lets Charlie go to sleep.

​

2 Senryu

Failed Haiku: A Journal of English Senryu (Online) November 2017

she could read him like a book—

not surprisingly
all his pages were loose leaves

a conference room:

he can’t believe his own ears
—it’s all doubletalk– 

Rehearsal

Eunoia Review (Online) October 2017

He feeds the ravenous seagulls down beside the lake, shares his lunch hour with people that most other people disregard. He thinks about Richard, living alone in his shack made of watermelon sugar, thinks about Robert risking his life by having his teeth cleaned without the benefit of antibiotics. He thinks about his own heart, murmuring unsteadily in his chest; about the problems of becoming older and colder in a land that rewards youth and warmth; about being fat and lazy in a place that values only fitness and ambition.

 

Today he listens to the radio and watches a freshwater iceberg circling around in the current where the lake flows out into the river, flows north toward Canada, where the iceberg seems particularly unwilling to go but seems equally and inevitably destined to be.

 

When he gets home, before it gets dark, he remembers the seagulls and the iceberg but he only tells her about the iceberg. When he tells her about the iceberg’s apparent indecision about staying in the lake or going with the flow, north to Canada, she tilts her head to one side and wonders about where he finds the time to think about saying such things. When he opens his journal and reads aloud the same words he just used to tell her all about the indecisive iceberg, everything seems to fall into place for her. A look comes over her face: sudden awareness that he’d never say anything out loud he hadn’t already written down (or imagined writing down) to tell her later.

 

He loves her and she has brown hair. He plans to write about her beautiful brown hair at some time in the future, as soon as he can, and come home after work, tell her all about it before it gets dark.

Awaiting Acceptance

Poetry Breakfast (Online) October 2017


I will have coffee and cigarettes on the porch.
I will watch the morning build itself

from fading dark. Men will arrive,
and I will think that this is work

I could do myself, but it will not be
true: there are to be new steps, and I

will only watch. There will be scrap heaps
and sawdust, and I will be busy, inspecting

cobwebs in the joists, pondering errant
commas, watching for the mailman’s van.

Duty

The Drabble (online) August 2017


“Has my time finally come round, brother?” he asked the executioner, who stood by patiently, ax in hand. Because he was hooded and constrained by statute from speaking, the executioner did not reply, but their simultaneous presence at that very spot, standing opposite each other, separated only by the oversized chopping block at the appointed hour, spoke for him.

The prisoner made a low bow. The executioner took full advantage. Soon it was silent and they were both welcomed home.

The executioner’s mother, having lost half her sons, wept.

Sisters

The Drabble (Online) May 2017

One sister, mad, alone and despairing, stood arms outstretched, motionless on the track. The rail, as rails must, sang under the weight of the train, and the sister, bereft of song, stopped singing forever.

The other sister, later, curious, leaned too far over the railing of the trestle hoping to see where her sister had finished her song.

In the morning, passersby, unaware of the relationship, finding the second sister lifeless on the graveled rail bed, marveled at the coincidence of two women, dead at the same spot, less than a week apart.

The Sad Truth

One Sentence Poems (Online) January 2017

You never know it
until the door closes
behind her
and you think.

The Daily Grind

Poetry Breakfast (Online) January 2017

After the five-day holiday, after
almost a week of sleeping in and
napping at will, he’s unprepared
at half-past five to face the fact
that it’s another workday to be
endured, to slavishly slave away.
Routine works best to overcome
inertia, he thinks, so he goes out
to the kitchen, sets the coffee
brewing and turns on the morning
news. A scoundrel’s in office—no
news there—and by the time he’s
brushed, dressed, and ready to go
the coffee’s ready, too. He fills
the travel mug, kisses his lover
goodbye, and sails out to face
the day ahead. It’s not until
he’s almost half-way to work
he reaches for the cup, takes a
sip and frowns. It’s awful and
he can’t imagine why. But then
it comes to him: no brandy.