Nov 21
On My Back At the ½ way house one of the counselors got Parkinsons He could still hoist the 20 gallon water jug onto the dispenser but then he couldn’t and became slow as a tortoise, couldn’t do the bed checks anymore and was finally let go A while later, while I was working graveyard, …
Nov 20
Empty Holes for Eyes These recurring false awakenings feel too close to vivid comatose states of horror that never end. I look at myself in the mirror and have no eyes. Then I realize if I really had no eyes, I wouldn’t be able to see. Which means I’m still stuck in a dream. What …
Nov 19
The Queen of Texas When my maternal grandmother was still relevant she fried porkchops. She fried chicken. She fried okra. She fried bacon. She fried sausage. She dunked cookies in coffee. She burned trash in a barrel. She answered phones. She tickled backs. She told stories. She sang songs. She broke fevers with cold wash …
Nov 18
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 …
Nov 17
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 …
Nov 16
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 …
Nov 15
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 …
Nov 14
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 …
Nov 13
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 …
Nov 12
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 …
