The Barrens

Under lights strung taut across unthawed lots,

we brought our tragedies, ribboned in red.                             

It’s the happiest season, they said.

So we flooded the lines among aisles of pine.

But as funds dried up, we paid with our quilts.

Then lowering heads down fog-full streets,

we dragged home firs, trailing boughs at our feet.

Seeking heat we cooked trunks in barrels of rust

which turned ruby the throats of the lonely among us,

cheeks bursting blood in a fiery flush.

If our flesh were scalded raw,

if blood dripped thin along our fists, 

who would ash our decay once our souls flew away?

The Big Windows Review, July 2017

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Clothespole

Mom used to spin around the stem of our old clothespole,

except as the paint dried at the first stirring of springtime. 

Grandpop strung rope from garage roof to porch hook

so grandmom could shake out the clouds of socks and towels.

He built our homestead which still stands after decades—

though he’s long-buried, a hero in our mirrors and frames.           

Grandmom used to pin me too to swing from her lines

in the cirrus shapes stretched with the wind flowing flags.   

Circling that clothespole in grass dark as pine,

Mother and I, both in our times, scaled the air to touch

the sunshine between us and abundant depths of sky.

Fox Glove Journal, February 2017

You at the Gate

Should you ever decide

to stop by the house,

you’ll find me

where you left me

when you drove away.

Here on our porch

for much of the night,

I turn cigarettes into piles

of ash and sit

rocking,

rocking—

you’re

out there

somewhere.

Though the summer dust freezes

under snow globe glitter,                    

it will rise again when

the heat returns.

Maybe one day you’ll hang

that left through our gate

and rattle up the gravel

in your teal Toyota.

I’ll bow my head

in your neck

your gentle frame in

my tingling arms.

I never really

deserved you anyway.

I know I was the faithless one:

betraying our rings,

believing their lies,

raiding your drawers

with my distrust.

You collected your things,

but mine are still strewn.

I can’t seem to fix

what’s so thoroughly broken.

Lit Up Magazine, October 2008

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Canary

 Fake flowers and liniment bottles don’t rot

though decades back their owners last left

the locks unturned. 

Now explorers scatter dust and feathers,

searching dates in piles of papers

under a caged upturned breastbone.

A song long ago slipped its wires,

burst the sofa window, dissolved into
ocean of wide open sky.

Random Sample, May 2016



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Bridge

Back when she had Raggedy Ann red carpet and

baby brothers in their cribs between sky

walls next door, she delighted in

her big girl room.

She’d sing from her depths and swing around her

bed posts.  She was still too little to untrack

hollow closet doors, incline them, and

slide kid bros from bed to floor.

Yet ideas grew during afternoon naps to become 

bridge-crossings on boards leveled toward

her toddler sister’s bed (for whom she

prayed so life would always

hold joy).  They built castles with the new bed but

dreamed in the other until baby sis turned

nine—too big next to teen sister’s

third trimester belly.

None grown among them, the infant didn’t come

home.  After the hospital, big sis slept alone,

ceiling-staring and seemingly idea-less,

lost for the rest of her childhood. 

originally published in Silver Birch Press, April 2015

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