We talk a lot about “the journey” in the figurative sense. Life is a journey. Focus on the journey, not the destination. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Our language is filled with the cliché of “the journey”. It’s not often that you get to see a literal journey played out … Continue reading Ultra
Miskito Language Lesson 3 Review What is your mother doing? What are the children doing? Who is crying? Is the dog playing? The dog is not playing. It is looking for food. The children are looking for a book. We aren’t looking for anything. We’re speaking Miskito. What are the women cooking? All the mangoes … Continue reading Found Poem: Miskito Language Lesson 3 Review
Watching a young deer go by I wonder Is she is the wrong place or am I? She is the one leaping every yard in two bounds flagging her upright tail and vaulting weightlessly over the neighbor’s hydrangeas I am the one struggling with the strings of my kitchen blinds straining to get a better … Continue reading A Deer in My Neighborhood
Where the action takes place the time the space the meaning the manger the city gate The knives flying like birds against a steel sky the skin-crust afternoon on a leaking paradise The swiveling barber’s chair the wailing mother’s lair dark light dark light Oh the colors there! The whipping post the fox’s hole the … Continue reading Setting
I am returning to this blog after several years away like a small town I once passed through. I never really knew anyone while I was there the first time. No one who is here now, was there when I first saw it. It is sleepier than ever before if that is even possible. I … Continue reading Small Town
Some work their entire lives so you can spend each day lost in a labyrinth of dead people stuffing bolts down the cylinders of pipe organs and shaving sorrow bald so you can see where he shines and where he folds and you take suffering into the palm of your hand lower it to the … Continue reading Untitled
We can give it a new spin like we all know she’s a red-headed orphan who sings but what if she’s a red-headed orphan who sings under the sea and also solves crime? Or what if it’s the red-headed orphan now sixty years later and she’s a grandmother but she doesn’t like children and she … Continue reading New Spin
I am going to die at dusk and arrive like the afternoon Maconda train to the anticipation of your dearly departed. Do not mourn. I have had no better ambition but to die after the earth-eater is fed to her sustenance. The final stitch is in my shroud. I have been weaving and unweaving it … Continue reading Amaranta
My mother’s memory fills an airy portion of her mind. From where she was first kansas, buttoned up and sleeveless green and gold like the swirled pattern of her mother’s couch. The one she bought before she knew she would lay out her life in an unadjusted hospital bed with three uncertain children peering through … Continue reading My Mother’s Memory
A man returns to apologize to his wife having been on board a ship nearly eight months I know you she said to him Aren’t you the man who spilled blood off of starboard and so drained the whole ocean? His beard was full and he still wreaked of sea sweat. It had to be … Continue reading Drought
Honey and Salt 