In Conversation

Old Man Swarmed by Wasps While Mowing the Lawn his baptist knees ain’t bruised his baptist throat don’t strain singing from the hymnal but his voice today, lord, his voice shouts to glory knees white as angels’ wings modesty upheld in lightwash denim denim that’ll stain green when he falls on them baptist knees, humble …

The Broken Buddha by Johnny Cordova (Roadside Press) Johnny Cordova’s The Broken Buddha is a restless, confessional pilgrimage—one that moves through Southeast Asia and India before circling back to the American West, to fathers and daughters, to addiction, grief, music, and memory. Published by Roadside Press, the collection reads like a spiritual travelogue written in …

The Political Theater Elected officials execute multimedia charades, binkies for constituent sucking and fodder for uneducated guesses by conspiracy theorists who offer dime store outcomes: Big grown-up donors order and representatives hold onto jobs another cycle. The mirror put to the cynicism plumbs through 250 years to the stretched, exhausted ideal heaving, “help!” to the …

Confessional Poetry More than our floor routine that night at Justine’s apartment, more than eating another lobster from the Boston Seafood Company, more than the sweet good life we could have had stealing paintings from the Louvre, more than the melatonin and the snow like a lake in the sun, more than the sobering clarity …

The Bartender At the bar, you sit to the left of me, though I thought I told you, I prefer you on the right The bartender nodded his head up, then down, soon handing me my usual, and a plate with three extra limes You’re pointing at the big screen TV, shouting with some strangers, …

Jack Kerouac never chewed away the January Blues Eating grape flavored pez candy a few days after Christmas my daughters cat is sleeping on the puzzle table Have some pez I say to my husband no thanks, it tastes like grape pepto- bismol I toss the cat and stare at the puzzle which starts to …

The Bathroom Habits of the Desperate Rabble Bippy the supervising clown approaches at a fast walk, a stunt-legged trot, really, the pace he uses when he tries to catch me jotting insults into my Moleskine notebook which is crazy, of course, since I make no attempt to hide my literary aspirations on the clock. He …

Cold Windy Day I watch out the window For my neighbor. I haven’t seen him Since November. I watch for him every day. He decided to leave and he did. Obit was in the paper Last month. Neighbor and I Feed the cat now. He lived there a long time Inhabited those spaces of the …

this is the new year i resolve to lose thirty pounds to better my body; read books from my local library, for my mind and community. are these empty resolutions parading as good intentions? this is the new year i haven’t been this excited since nineteen rolled into the twenties; i am cautiously optimistic. take …

Winter woes There was this exquisite ordinariness To the morning Sun playing with children My winter clothes Drying for a change A sort of day That should ring Sunday church bells Inside my head On a Tuesday morning Before one could process the gratitude That should have been expressed Inside a winter’s cold heart There …