In Conversation

  Holy Toledo (pt 2) I woke up the morning of the Underground Lit Fest snuggled in a warm bed, absolutely ecstatic I didn’t spend the night in the backseat of my Jeep, which seemed a very real possibility less than eight hours earlier. My wife roused herself, stretched, asked me what poems I intended …

Apple-Polishing Rag It’s 1:30AM on Tuesday. I have a job interview scheduled for today. But I don’t want to go. The job is dull and dirty. It will not offer me enough payroll hours, a wage equal to my years of experience or satisfaction of any kind. It will offer me a weekly paycheck— the …

Trying to Catch a Flame in this Windstorm at the End of the World by Steve Henn (Arroyo Seco Press) Steve Henn’s Trying to Catch a Flame in this Windstorm at the End of the World is a raw, funny, and unflinchingly human collection that feels like both personal diary and public confession. The poems …

Because Death Is Real Because death is real, I overwatered my pansies the day after it rained. It’s the last thing I’ve got. The last thing alive in my life. Because death is real, I blocked you on my phone, but not on social media. In case you want to ask why. Because death is …

Clods of Mead for the Ancient Mind The world is a small place if you crawl back into the womb. When I hold my hands out, it is with a moderate disbelief more than faith. Dirty dish water after the dinner hour rush. Clods of mead for the ancient mind. Movie theatres let out into …

After Our Three Year Old Learns the Realtor Won’t Rent to Families with Children I buy her a donut, the last glaze twist in the shop at two in the afternoon. We sit in the window and watch the traffic on Main Street. I drink coffee. She sips chocolate milk through a straw. All these …

A Witch’s Promise To My Christian Cousin you’ve inherited some money & married well two or three times a true Capricorn you have scrambled your way to the top of the garbage heap you tell anyone who will listen that you are favored by God you owe it all to a man named Jesus dying …

Holy Toledo (pt 1 of 3) I wanted to drive up the eleven hours to Toledo, Ohio to attend the Underground Lit Fest, a two-day poetic odyssey, ten of those minutes earmarked for me and my shit. It had been ten years since I engaged in a face-to-face conversation with Michele McDannold, and fifteen years …

The Shining She must have taken a shining to me Sat there looking at me with her lovesick puppy dog eyes Asked me if I wanted to go to a secluded motel somewhere and get it on as if I didn’t know what that would lead to in the end   Alan Catlin worked for the …

Digging Ditches My father found me a job digging foundations at the low-income housing development north of town. He knew the boss. In fact, he knew everyone who commanded a platoon of shovels and picks. I was hired without much vetting, a favor to my father who feared his son needed a shovel to become …