My Mother Reading a Book on Dying
I never saw her read another book. Cookbooks. After she turned seventy, she carried the thick book on what to expect when the body began to die to the…
On a Collage by Peter Sacks
the shape of a wraith made from discards and swatches fabric cuttings pasted down …
From a Tree above the Liffey
It will make good sense when you get there to rise before dawn and take a long look out after the night has passed. Witness the wet gray…
A Sting Hovers in My Window
Unmoved by my presence, the wasp works one end of her nest to the other. The lintel's shade elides the screen between our dwellings as the cross breeze carries…
Lingering Signs of Drought
The white roots probed late summer underground, Sought in moist tubers of swelled potatoes A darkness that encouraged them to take Their fill, stretch out, and die. At harvest,…
Ode to You
Yo, for how your “o” is like the peephole through the front door of my life (and so many others’) framing one face then another a cameo setting for…
A Day Here
Even when a low ceiling of clouds is forecast for all its hours the day starts throwing light around like chicken feed from under a doorway or comes outside…
The Presence of Stasis
The green blades glow as the low sun slants across lawns. The houses lining the lake hover above what’s ending: the day, the summer, my calculated innocence: nothing has…
Self-portait
Let the wind whip a canvas with coffee grounds and leaves, the easel upright on a porch with boards missing like molars. Give the wind time and pigment: the…
Armageddon Blues
If my nerves were sturdier, If I could let your apocalypse talk roll off my back, if my favorite nightcap were plunging over a cliff and being pulled back,…