A Short History of Flowers
Hammurabi loved flowers and strewed his bridal bed with rose petals, blood red. Nero loved the fuchsia for attracting hummingbirds and their delectable tongues. Louis XIV sent Madame de…
Forbearance
"All actual life is encounter." Martin Buber The cows look slowly up, flick flies with their tails, with their ears, the whole of their flanks twitching…
Green Land
His hand sunk in me like a sunset. I lay on my back and listened the night to black. My skin smelled deciduous. I breathed petals in the silence.…
Chippewa County, WI
Dark Lake isn’t bad—necessarily. Dark Lake is the mouth of a cave. A dark pupil in everyone’s eyes. The lost dog opens his soul. Dark spills out on the…
Still Life with Prophet
When Daniel is dreaming don’t wake him. What he sees will escape time: feather and horn, hunger, what angels do when God points a finger: Pluck men from a…
Last night the folded t-shirt on his pillow sat up and spoke to me
It’s not true you know, it said that he doesn’t care for you. I know, it said, that sometimes he turns away when you are most amourous but you…
Fifth Essay on Husbandry
If it’s not the roof leaking, it’s the basement flooding, and if you’re lucky, if it’s raining hard enough, it’s both. Another mostly empty paint-can abandoned to the damp…
Something about the Recipe
No one else could make it the same. Maybe the whipped milk cream was never fluffed to that cumulus, or maybe the ten pinches of sugar weren’t sifted to…
Pinning up the Dead
Kuya said to coffin Goldie in an empty cigarette pack, or say some words and flush him down the drain, but his sleek belly was a wink in the…