Monthly Archives: September 2019

Ramekin

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Ramekin

I speak when you speak,
say nothing to your everything.

The world is a ramekin filled with bits of ourselves.

It is a recipe for error,
a list of adorations and illusion.
You take my hand and say when I’m gone
there will be others.

The ingredients include vinegar and salt, but no honey.

You hear what I hear, only more.
Teach me to breathe.

Empty this dish.

Tell me.

 

 

“Ramekin” was first published in the online anthology Igxante: An Ontology. I am grateful to editor Kate Morgan for taking this piece.

Two Poems Up at Recenter Press

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My poems “Fossil Egg” and “Cyclops” are live at Recenter Press, a publisher “dedicated to sharing work that is grounded in both the spiritual and the material.” Many thanks to the editors for taking these pieces.

 

 

 

Gruyere

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Gruyere

Thinking of speech and the gruyere sliver
balancing on that blade, which nouns push it over,
which hold it in place. How simplicity defies the complex.
Like the hard-crusted bread of flour, water, salt and yeast.
The elemental surge. A little steam. An incantation
born of emptiness: he speaks but says nothing
as the cheese teeters on the edge, suffering
the plight of the incomprehensible. Funny
that adding more reduces the whole, and less
flavors it. A few words, a spice. A syllable.
Milk and rennet. Verbs. A confident tongue.

 

“Gruyere” was published in Nthanda Review, an online literary magazine out of Mawali, in January 2019.

 

 

 

When Shadows Hide

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When Shadows Hide

I breathe when you breathe,
and watching me,
you capture each lost molecule.

This book blinks whenever you turn the page.
I see you between the words, between the white threads.

You are the adored chapter, the one I read in bed before
sleep, and after I wake, before the first wren announces
dawn, then in the afternoon’s highest point, when shadows hide,
and later, as they emerge to stroke your bare shoulder.

What’s on the other side, you ask. What do you hear?

Your breath, I say. Your name.

 

“When Shadows Hide” was first published in the print anthology Epiphanies and Late Realizations of Love in February 2019.

 

The Trains I Know

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The Trains I Know

The trains I know
seek solitude
in darkness,

they wear
wind and cold
with pride,

are never
lonely.
Sometimes they

sing too loud,
or mourn
harshly a

star’s fall, but
they never
deny their

purpose: to
draw between
and connect,

to witness and
serve, to bear
and endure

our unsought
burdens
to the end.

 

* * *

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“The Trains I Know” was first published in RiverLit in 2013.

Confession to Montgomery, Asleep on the Church Steps

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bagels and cream cheese MGD©

 

Confession to Montgomery, Asleep on the Church Steps

If I walk quietly by
it is not to avoid disturbing you,

but rather myself. What
could I give you

but another bagel, the
boiled dough of nothingness

rising in cloudy water,
delaying, perhaps, another

guilty twinge. You have no
answers but when you

speak to the air, sometimes
a smile creaks through

the broken words, and I
think even in this cloistered

darkness we may close
the circle between halves

and might-have-beens,
an understanding, if only

in the language of bread
and coffee and the

disregarded. But today I stride
on, without pause, counting

on nothing that can’t be
pocketed or spoken aloud,

my steps echoing down
the alley and its secrets,

along the crosswalk’s painted
guides, under the sagging

power lines and through
your streetlight’s dim halo.

 

Homeless

 

This first appeared on the blog in January 2016, and was published in Compassion Anthology in March 2019. I have not seen the man who inspired this poem in over two years. I hope he has found shelter and kindness.

 

February 6, 2018

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February 6, 2018

Today every song is a diary of lost dates,
moments cured in precision

and stowed away on a train to the next town,
always yearning the beyond, around that precious bend.

Or, a funeral for tomorrow, processing the improbable
present. Lights, flickering. The starling’s first peep.

All urgency dies. Outside, leaves float in the fog
as I drive away to a finite point.

Now, a whistle mourns the day’s broken
surge; never having said goodbye, you move on.

 

* * *

“February 6, 2018” was published in the North Dakota Quarterly in February 2019.

 

Rain Haibun

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Rain Haibun

Watching that thought slide down the wall
into the grass. Losing it and the next,
celebrating each. How quickly the body
accepts decay. This knee, those arteries.
A fragmented life. Not even the rain
brings us back.

 

The ticking roof
swells with thunder.
My old friends, waiting.

 

* * *

“Rain Haibun” first appeared in The Larger Geometry: poems for peace, available at Amazon. This anthology of poems that “uplift, encourage and inspire,” features poets from five countries and three continents. Published by the interfaith peaceCENTER of San Antonio, Texas, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. All proceeds from the sale of this anthology go to benefit the peaceCENTER.

I’m pleased to have had a small role in selecting the poems.

Contributing poets include Lynne Burnett, Charlotte Hamrick, Daryl Muranaka, Stephanie L. Harper, Sudhanshu Chopra, Texas Poet Laureate Carol Coffee Reposa, Michael Vecchio, Rebecca Raphael and others.

 

 

In Praise of Chiggers

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In Praise of Chiggers

 

And the others
feasting unseen
upon you,
offering their
blessings
of digestive juices
and anticoagulants,
allergic reactions and
reddened mounds
made pleasurable
by your fingernails
scraping the skin
around them, over
and raw, again,
again, it feels
so good!

 

“In Praise of Chiggers” first appeared here in August, 2017. We’re past the season now…

 

Windows: A Theology

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 Windows: A Theology

They capture no light, but allow admittance.
Nor is darkness their prisoner.

Opened or closed, their purposes change,
like water trickling downhill, gathering,
absorbing, dwindling, pretending.

Looking at them, you see past, into.

I have taken glass from its source; I have
fallen through the hard edges and emerged

unscathed. Smooth to the touch,
yet transparent. The words mean nothing
or all, and exist only within structure.

So little to believe, everything to defy.

 

 

 

“Windows: A Theology” was first published in the online anthology Igxante: An Ontology. I am grateful to editor Kate Morgan for taking this piece.