He has no callouses of note and spends ( Read more... )

Dragging branches up the highway ( Read more... )

1. hearing/ reading/ watching anything about a) abused children or b) violent children ( Read more... )

1.
a bridge isn't my metaphor for anything,
just a path through the air for the enterprising
but flightless.

if you want a metaphor from me,
start down there in the mud.
climb up without a bank
or tree; push your weight against the earth,
and expect her to move.

feel her chilly, thin blood sucking at your tiny feet.
fill your eyes with the sun and your ( Read more... )

A housecat tearing out the backdoor screen again ( Read more... )

There are secrets that can't be told
no matter how much you tell them:
how vision collapses into the eyes of the dead
with an inaudible thud that reverberates
through your sleeping and waking;
how sleeping and waking are not linear
or cyclical, but spiral in the gravity well
of collapse; how your heart says, "thud.
thud. thud."; how you suddenly ( Read more... )

There were no bungee cords or rope in your car
so we tied it on with nylons from the thrift store
on 36th and Farnam.  By the time we reached Davenport
we had to concede that it was a poor application of intimate apparel. 
We parked and carried it the fourteen blocks home
and ate salami and cheese and drank orange juice and walked back.

When we broke ( Read more... )

A man comes unexpected into a room
you forgot to lock (in truth, had forgotten
was even there) and removes his hat,
and bows as if you had been waiting.

You see that he is neither harmless
nor malicious.  So you take his hat
and put it on a hook by the door,
and close the door.

You wonder for a moment why the hook
is so low on the wall, until you remember ( Read more... )

1.
He was hanging the video stills:
nine frames too small and square
to get straight.  I offered advice
until he left in disgust without
telling me the story.

In the first frame, the piano
hangs above the horizon:
you can guess the rest,
except maybe for frames seven,
impact-- the piano should come apart here, but doesn't--
and nine-- it seems to have ( Read more... )

They call it your conviction,
as if you were convinced:
as if it were not provocation;
as if it were not gravity;
as if it were not concrete.

They say that this tragedy
belongs only to the dead and bereaved--
that there is no seat in it for you.
You receive no prayer service,
no condolences.

They call it manslaughter
as if it were you
who treated a man as an ( Read more... )