hobos

they label transience as a crime. i know why.
it is because, rootless, we wither, and we die.
and what man has the courage to remove the dead
from his own streets?

those who do not die from it
are not fully alive, their grafted stems
suspended in a jelly.
it is like this they go from place to place.

"you mistake me," says my lover. "i am not a plant."
( Read more... )

how can i explain ( Read more... )

virginia dare

the gentleman took leave of the king
and set sail on his vessel.
the ocean thrashed the boat, but did not sink it.
when he arrived, there was a fetid air
accumulating, high above the swamps,
crippling the tree leaves.
his daughter gave birth there,
and yet he still left her, and when he came again
did not attempt to find her.

jamestown church

( Read more... )

my own reasons

the article: common characteristics
in adult children of alcoholics.  why does it stir such anger?
they have studied us; the list, each bullet round and smart,
exactly right.  it's stunning.

problems with self-regulation.
this is the term that doctors use for being what my mother calls
"a child of extremes."  no bump to slow us in between ( Read more... )

whose face is this?

whose face is this? doe eyes, my father's nose,
my mother's eyes, teeth, cheeks, swan's neck,
an adult face (hair shorn into a mohawk,
trailing brassy blonde, tipped with pink,
incongruous, next to this adult expression)
whose face is this? not mine, the child,
who sees in mirrors only flaws: pocks, flakes,
scabs, lines, spots, craters ( Read more... )

to see the rapist has a son

to see the rapist has a son--
to see the girl he married, then,
beside him every night in bed,
a kiss exchanged before they sleep--

it stands to reason that they make
their love, every now and again--
how does he say it to her, then,
when they are joined, like we were joined?

an unknown girl from somewhere else,
to keep his child ( Read more... )

the girl

a china cabinet of words, phrases,
iniquities, dusted and rearranged,
while she stands by in her blue dress,
arm hiding her dirty apron, finger crooked,
indicating them.

when dawn appears she plucks it,
shines it on a tea-towel, places it (its enzymes
working, rotting it) on the sill
where flies gather, while the sky,
bereft, lows a sullen inquiry.
( Read more... )

why do i not pray for my mother?

why do i not pray for my mother? she is the one who does not appear on my list, time after time, when i am running down it giving thanks, asking protection; she does not need them. what would i say? thank you for giving me a mother i used to have; protect her from the vodka bottle she hides behind the armchair in her ( Read more... )

state route 160 to pahrump, nv

a lavender dusk (my first) turned round like an egg
or a stone in the hand to be examined, breathing snow air slightly
through a clenched fist- shell touch to a fingertip tracing, hesitantly,
along the arc of the evening’s first stars; pocked moon, a fishing weight
to anchor the heavens, flooded with cobalt, into a long ( Read more... )

while talking to a friend who luckier has left

i have a fever
                wise men know
                                to leave
                and go
and go and go

with tires bald but
                route-reprieved
                                i leave
                and go
and go and go

what address please-
                i do not know
            ( Read more... )