In Conversation

bruise a nation of ghosts, and they all wish you dead and sooner or later it’s gonna happen can’t be 1994 forever, okay? can’t waste yr whole life being pissed at yr father because what was he actually guilty of? had you pegged for all the things you weren’t not a poet, not a suicide, …

Land of Nod in the Washington Tavern Having him around, while otherwise alone in the bar, three hours past midnight, was like living my own Zendeath poem. Any minute I expected him to punch in his favorite Golden Oldies on the retro juke for mood music: “All Those People Who Died” by Jim Carroll, Talking …

My Own I don’t like being seen digging in to the ground. I don’t like being spied on while cutting things down into smaller pieces of me. I do most of my work inside my own mind. My own space with windows shut, doors locked. Instead of writing a book review, I write another review …

Every Idiot is Somebody’s Son When my son loses his job as he invariably must, he won’t admit it right away, but I always know. He gets a squirrelly look in his eyes. I’ve no better way to describe it. His eyes get squirrelly. Now, I’ve been told squirrels can be stupidly industrious. I don’t …

Better Than The Best American Poetry Dave Newman Roadside Press Reviewed by Aleathia Drehmer This morning I read Dave Newman’s “Better Than The Best American Poetry” from Roadside Press. I am not sure that I had ever read his work before. He and I write very differently so maybe our work would not cross each …

Americana I grabbed Don Delillo at a used bookstore, not him personally, I am not the president, but grabbed his book, Americana, cover worn to the point of being free, got home, flipped through it like a flipbook, found a bookmark between the pages, no, not a laminated banned booklist or a massage parlor business …

Unknown Poet on a June night at the beginning of summer I started going back through some of the old magazines where I had some of my early poems published and when I read them over again after so many years had come and gone it was like discovering some unknown poet for the very …

Rising.  We kissed by the crumbling church to the early morning birdsongs rising from the cedar tree, before I walked home to Sunday morning beneath the old railway bridge. I woke up later just to happily paint the skies green and fields blue. With a ceasefire apparent from the silence of the polarising voices that …

Dystopian Selfie I will climb the highest tree, look down to the ground below and laugh at the dizzying heights. Marilyn Monroe’s blustering air shaft dressskirts ain’t got nothin on my yoga pants and coffee-stained T-shirt that reads Writers Against Trump, showing him being crushed by an overwhelming weight of books, crushing him from his …

Vulture City Ramiro gets a percentage as a finder’s fee “Esta muy alto,” he says, pointing to a slot machine and the whale sits down with his wad of cash Ramiro has a gambling habit playing the top to live on the bottom and guys like that make my life hard knowing just enough to …