The Family Dollar Reverie
was walking down 3rd street afteranother 13 hr. Med. Center shift to pickup an energy drink so I’d finally wakeearly enough to do a twentyish mile runin prep...
The Safe Word
Every couple needs a safe wordonly to be used to say Stop!Because things have become too intenseor too painful potential or otherwiseOur safe word agreed...
Petals from a Little Rose
An old busy corner, a rainy dim night.The two standing by a broken street light.Would you buy one? She held a red rose.A mom and her child, a cute little...
Lips I Would Kiss
When I go for a slow walkup and down Geary AvenueI screen all the women likean amateur casting director.Most are too tall and thinor too short and sadly...
Master of His Realm
Download Full Image
Allison's Poetics
(A Slant Terza Rima Acrostic)Ah, that poem of your mother (Living on in elegy) whichLeapt the page, unsure whetherIt’d snare me with highs of suchSensimillan...
Four Haikus
105Adventure he yellsLets take the boat to the lakeTwo coats and a hat250Wasps swoopVacuum sucksShort life273Go away KanyeNo one cares what you thinkJust...
Salinger is Dead
(and the manned space program is ailing)1965 high-school English classWe’ve all read Holdenand Mockingbird andLord of the FliesMen were in spaceand we were...
The Twenty-Fifth Hour
The great clock in the foyer struck eight. “Time for bed,” Dad said.Freddie didn’t like getting ready for bed. He always felt he was being excluded, that he...
The Autumn Seabed
When in the boyhood of twenty I foresaw a seven-week saunter to and beyond an apotheotic St. Louisanas masterwork of byplay in both enthrallingthat...
LA
Slowly streaming towards LAEncapsulated in a steel corpuscleBreathing conditioned airOutside, thousands of tiresHum a tune with no meaningIn an artery of...
A Miracle of God
Download Full Image
The Cold Sky
When I heard them high and faintI looked upAs the first twenty emergedFrom a wispy pocket of cloud.We had been walking below the cold sky,A lumpy blanket of...
Birds' Day
Under my small red umbrella,Slapped with sea sprayAnd a stinging rain,I have wanderedInto their morning.The birds don't want me.Misty days are theirs to...
Waiting for the Parade
Maw has her good pearls on so she’s happy — for now — kicking back in her folding chair, glass of Gallo perched high, carried like a royal scepter. She’s the...
Tucking In (Claudia/Aisha)
Tucking in thesweet sweet toddlershe almost stretchesto reach above buther body seems tochange its mindBedtime story read but thereare stories we never...
Feeling a Little Hoarse
Download Full Image
I Bring You a Beet
It is the planet’s heartdipped in roses. The firstbite will be hard, your mouthruby with effort, but sweetwith secrets like creasesin lips or folded...
For A., Who Asked for a Flippant Metapoem
Ask for less - for instance, verseUsed in psych wards wadded air-Tight with gauche meter and (worse)Uppercase semaphores…orMaybe ask more of me, myNoisy...
Boys
BOYS 1Poor KidsWhen Adam and Eve Malady (made in God'simage, perhaps, but with a cosmic irony)played bauble-in-a-hole on a mattresswithout sheets, they begat...