Phone Calls & Faith
The phone calls come three nights in a row, 2:30’sh, from different people, waking, scaring us to death. The black, landline rotary dial hammers its bells like a fire alarm.
Monkeys in Maine
The peace and quietness of a summer morning, by a lake near “Stinkin” Lincoln Maine, was shattered by the startling discharge of a Remington Model 1875 Single Action Army revolver.
My father’s loud cry and a string of bad words followed.
Transit Visa to Redemption
Everyone but Helmut was anxious. He sat by himself, as usual, at a small table in a corner of Café Stammtisch, calmly reading a newspaper. Germany Invades Rhineland! The headline took up half a page. He yawned.
“Cavafy in Palm Springs, 2014” and “Back of the House, Palm Springs”
He rode in on horseback, his silky mustache
And I was worried for his life. Not that he couldn’t
Care for himself. He had strong legs, especially
The thighs. He was so impressionable among
The men. Christian took an instant liking
“Red Castles,” “Falling” and “Grit”
An angry goat fronts
the entrance of the trail –
an unfamiliar gatekeeper.
Payment is an exchange
of glances, a thousand
yards to nowhere.
“Social Medium,” “The Practice of Late Stage Capitalism” and “The Green Coin”
I walk paths near my home
And think about breaking language
In pieces. I think about the shards
Scattered by will and hunger
Because so much has been lost.
“Alive: The City,” “Bloody Tissue on a Subway Station Stair” and “Two Hawks”
In the summer heat, the friction of feet melts the city’s asphalt to sludge. A mammoth wave curls over Broad. Cocoons pigeons and taxis. Engulfs cardboard boxes, condos, and their inhabitants. Folds into itself.
“Grandma’s Generation,” “Maybe Someday” and “Corkboard Mind”
The days of lone children
riding atop handlebars
through cookie-cutter neighborhoods
are memories of yesteryear.
They’re sepia photographs
in an attic-ridden album
blanketed in a thick film of dust.
Balcony Scene
Our town is laid out like a chessboard. Two powerful families who dominated the place for almost two centuries, the Cassavoys and the Farradays, have fought for control. First they fought over lumber rights. Then it was land. Then the battleground shifted to public opinion. Each had a newspaper of different political stripes. Each had a radio station playing different kinds of music.
“Teacher Poet: Advice Upon Visiting Her Classroom,” “Back to the Roots” and “Sunrise”
Framed diploma and teacher’s license,
taped on the institutional wall,
these credentials face the stars.
The star-struck welcome board posts a message:
Practice safety.
But will these stars fade, fall into the waste basket?
Sozopol
When she approached me in the hotel lobby, I was reviewing my notes for the presentation I would be giving the next day. My laptop was open on the glass-topped coffee table and twenty-three PowerPoint slides alternated on the screen as I clicked through them repeatedly. I had given this presentation before, many times, but now I was nervous for some inexplicable reason. I was prepared, but on the other hand, I was skeptical of how my talk would be received.
“In the Heat of the Moon” and “Dark Matter”
Late summer days, relentless sun
heating the morning city, turning
afternoon to a concrete sauna
during the searing days of August,
when, even at night, the asphalt steams.
Chattanooga
The Tennessee hills are tattered green curtains longing for the first frost to replace the well-worn testament of summer with a golden raiment. Even the aggressive Kudzu crowding the edge of the highway seems tired of reaching, always reaching for tomorrow. We’ve been on the road for a long time now and the tiredness we carry has settled inside.
“Patina”, “Onward Snow” and “On chord progressions”
One corner brick
100 year old black blossom stained across
Northeast soot fading
to raw pink orange southwest
Checks the force of two walls
20 bricks under
100 press down from above
A Civil War
The streets around here empty out in December, until there are just the lazy summertime sounds of a few people walking their dogs or hosing their plants. Neighbourhoods are blanketed under a mostly placid silence, but sometimes there’s also a pall that covers those of us that haven’t escaped to the seaside.
“The Special Relativity of Consciousness,” “Ecstatic Acquiescence” and “Diogenes Spotted in Humboldt Park”
There is a man falling from the sky.
I am serious. He is carrying a photon clock
and the light inside is stretching
the duration of a second. The speed of light.
Lifelines
Laurie arrived at work fifteen minutes early on her first day of work.
“We don’t want to overwork you on your first day,” Dan said. “C’mon across the street, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”
Charlie’s Coffee Shop was packed with men between the ages of about twenty and sixty.
“Origin,” “Felicity” and “Badwater Basin”
I looked through the window of the dead
bar. Marantha was slow dancing
with the semblance of Rāfe. They were
shape shifting like shadows on a wall—
The barkeep said, ‘Anders, it’s time.
Carter
A man gave me this knife for protection. The government is watching me. My every move is being watched. The CIA is watching me through my truck, my phone, my stove, my microwave, and probably this knife. I trust no one. Don’t be surprised if a government sniper shoots me dead—right through the head.
His Crystallized Fingernails
Forced by family duty, cousin Greg and I sat with an older couple, from the good ole’ USA, in a music hall on the Champs Élyéese. I was taking a break from graduate school and imposing on my kin. My Greg-kin was working and living in Paris.
On A Dime
As my husband and I sped along the interstate, trying to keep up with the police car leading the way, I thought, This is some other family’s story, not ours. How the hell did we get here? We thought home was the one place we could relax and let our guard down. We thought wrong.
2020 Was the Year
2020 was the year we will always remember but not with photos or mementos. It will be forever marked by pages left blank in photo albums and online collections which used to chronicle our most important life cycle events and the mundane ones as well.
Privilege on Parade
When my alarm sounds at 5:30 a.m., I am already awake. I lie staring at the ceiling, reaching over to pop the snooze button into silence. I have one hour to go running, then shower before you get here, before Liz wakes up and comes with us to the next round of appointments at the hospital.
Broken Stems
At eighteen, she had changed her name to Persephone and tattooed a blooming flower with a leafy stem just below her collarbone, above the location of her heart. It was the size of an apple or a pomegranate, which was slightly too big for the location on her slender frame, but she had done it anyway.