Summer Algebra

Summer sat in the heat watching day dreams play outof festivals and barefoot fields, of sleeping in moonlighthearing soft ocean tides, and the morning damp on ourclothes. We were the silhouettes in the sunlight, love burning freeon highways and skylines, desert peaks, bikini lines,and bad jokes reciprocated and the confidence to tellour secrets in bright…

A Drunken Stumble

The sacred babe of your mother’s eye glowing gold of train sets and playgrounds and your stuffed Benji to hold so closely over a flame in the kitchen and the heat only comforts your spite. These are Tuesdays in bed past bus stops and scholarships and a coffee liquor stolen from the kitchen’s top shelf….

Let It Be, Mr. John

How far does an ocean go of troubles –how long till the seabird finds its perch. How many miles Mr. Dylan,dear Jesus,the context of a word with no sentence. The tides are dark and the beaches lie quiet,not a star in the sky to compassbut a roar of what must always crash down. For as…

Whispers in the Ear

I lost my first tooth at 23,a long time coming,a black stone whenever I spoke.There were aches in my knees and knobs on my back,knots curdled and sick in my belly’s pit. Cancer? Tuberculosis? Liver failure?All three. Sweating profusely,interviews and meetings,executive discourse turning to my sins: Masturbating in the neighbor’s bushes,stealing mother’s pills,not staying late…

Want

All that’s left to remember is the feeling of faces, three thousand miles from touch. Etches left in a sketch erased: Carefully held on a Greyhound, folded along creases, slipped into a shirt pocket close to heart. That animal bore no animosity but in a moment flared its spite, flared the impulse to bleed its…

Murderous Love

I’ve picked the wrong major,ten minutes into the second classI can already tell thatthis isn’t the place for me:  Latte cups and politics,scarves and Doc Martens,soft spoken emotions.This flower is a metaphor for your trauma.  And the Professor has asked me to share my thoughtson a particular subject,on a beautiful tragedy. Tennessee Williams, by god,…

Weekend Walks

I know these streets from memories, crooked cobblestone bricks tripping sneakers, high heels, late-night waltzes home from bars. I know the storefronts, eateries, cafes — the corner you’d meet me for evening bogies, midnight chats, meandering stories. Your hair a faded blonde, your face a jaded youth. I know this town from a world in…

A Rabbit Hops At Night, Unseen

It was an evening in November,
cold rain and a wet street outside that had been dark since dinner.
And the house had been quiet because the kids had been sullen
and neither you nor I could see the street.

Old Soul

Gone for the winter but I’ll be back in the spring. I’ll be back for the warmer weather -back for family and holidays, my mother and sisters and friends. I’ll be back for the great lessons of seasoned professors and pages, and pages, and pages I would’ve read by the pool in June, or at…

The Drums They Beat

Arm in arm go the couple in white, down the aisle, through the crowd. Vows told in lace, speaking secrets in the midday sun: a bouquet soars across its yellow face. Consummation is a popular word for their grandparents. There’s a quiet announcement in the newspaper: congratulations. Congratulations from friends and family, a high school…