Jun 01
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 …
May 31
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 …
May 31
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 …
May 30
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 …
May 29
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 …
May 28
dead and dying poets with regards to Bill Sovern, and also Charlie Newman (who as far as I know ain’t dead yet) everywhere I look dead and dying poets out on blue highways celebrating another bang up show stalled out along the road but their words are still needed dead and dying poets cold in …
May 27
I May Not Control the Narrative, But Occasionally I Supervise It For four and a half years I supervised the assembly plant at Hydra Hydraulics. It wasn’t what I set out to do with this life, but I settled into it easily enough. I even grew to like it. The job appealed to the lazier …
May 26
A String of Lights for Brian We read and you left at the end of the night to sleep in the roots of the sky, to climb a string of lights through the ashes of the highest trees. We reveled toward connection on this island of cypress, we threw the blue turrets and glass domes …
May 25
An Other Christmas Jack O’ Ninetails slipped on a holiday paystub and tumbled underneath the Christmas lanterns lighting the callous alleyway. He sighed, slipped a tab under his tongue, and slid into the old city pub. Taking off his leather jacket, he spotted Harry Two Trades hugging their regular corner booth with his stupid Santa …
May 24
John Sweet knows a brutal end is coming, or at least, he identifies those who sing the bullshit dogma and try to escape through the palace window. “The Fact that God is neither a question nor an answer,” a line from “Running Dry”—a poem from his new collection And All of Us Drinking the Blood …
