When asked where are you from which is often I say where I awoke. When they dig deeper I flip the table sprinkle the retort with dessert sugar can usually name a street a town a park a lake a problem close to where the asker is from I’m good at guessing origins by...
July 2021 Writing
The Enticement of Repentance
They place Aunt Sis’s stretcher on the front row in the same alignment as the chairs…she can only see her son’s casket if she turns her head toward the front of the room. Fortunately the stroke had left some movement in her neck, but her limbs remain motionless. She...
Home Should Have No Walls
Early in their marriage they lived like nomads, moving from one family house to another, no carpets, curtains, or candelabra to call her own. This suits him, she thought. Many rooms to conceal his secrets. And she? She, like a tree, needed roots: to nourish and anchor...
Possum Pantoum
Sunset lattices from under the cottage even as a possum breathes its last— light and color beam a classroom projector refracting intervals, a spectrum from born to dead. Even as ol' Possum breathes his last on Mama's flea-jumping cotton robe retracing intervals, a...
Shadows flicker on the walls
Everything I am going to tell you is a lie. What was cannot be captured. Consider this. I lived in a place already decimated by incursions of men with axes, bulldozers, and power saws. Swaths of land denuded, carried in the earlier years, by chains and wagons pulled...
Waking up at home, dreaming
Wake up at home, dreaming Wake up from a long sleep and dig my toes into loamy soil under sycamores and oaks. Roll over and flip my pillow to the cool side, press the may apple and trillium against my cheek. Sleep-whisper good morning to the box turtle who shares the...
Surface of Last Scattering
That word… Home I have this house where my artwork and books are There I retreat to dream and sleep For house hath no fury To distract or rove Unlike igni fatuus So… Home Has no walls Cannot be contained Is bigger than my heart Contains whisps of...
Survival Shelter with No Tools
When asked where are you from which is often I say where I awoke. When they dig deeper I flip the table sprinkle the retort with dessert sugar can usually name a street a town a park a lake a problem close to where the asker is from I’m good at guessing origins by...
The Enticement of Repentance
They place Aunt Sis’s stretcher on the front row in the same alignment as the chairs…she can only see her son’s casket if she turns her head toward the front of the room. Fortunately the stroke had left some movement in her neck, but her limbs remain motionless. She...
Home Should Have No Walls
Early in their marriage they lived like nomads, moving from one family house to another, no carpets, curtains, or candelabra to call her own. This suits him, she thought. Many rooms to conceal his secrets. And she? She, like a tree, needed roots: to nourish and anchor...
Possum Pantoum
Sunset lattices from under the cottage even as a possum breathes its last— light and color beam a classroom projector refracting intervals, a spectrum from born to dead. Even as ol' Possum breathes his last on Mama's flea-jumping cotton robe retracing intervals, a...
Shadows flicker on the walls
Everything I am going to tell you is a lie. What was cannot be captured. Consider this. I lived in a place already decimated by incursions of men with axes, bulldozers, and power saws. Swaths of land denuded, carried in the earlier years, by chains and wagons pulled...
Waking up at home, dreaming
Wake up at home, dreaming Wake up from a long sleep and dig my toes into loamy soil under sycamores and oaks. Roll over and flip my pillow to the cool side, press the may apple and trillium against my cheek. Sleep-whisper good morning to the box turtle who shares the...
Surface of Last Scattering
That word… Home I have this house where my artwork and books are There I retreat to dream and sleep For house hath no fury To distract or rove Unlike igni fatuus So… Home Has no walls Cannot be contained Is bigger than my heart Contains whisps of...