Adaptations A Brindle Afghan disappears, if she can manage to be still, before a backdrop of shrubbery like triggerfish into the sargassum a jaguar into the understory or a human into a plaza, where hundreds are dancing, swaying together or apart, like the tentacles of a sea anemone hypnotic, concealing harpoons.…
“Is the Lack of Daylight Night?” (question asked by Arthur McMaster) Two gunshots in the just-past-twilight mostly-dark: one & then the next. Close enough to startle the brown jack nuzzling grass in a nearby patch yet so distant I can’t determine if those sounds are rifles in the southern woods or they’ve come southeast across…
I swear I never wrote about you, days spent cleaning, always ironing the sheets and underwear, hours cooking and baking for the freezer, never family. Karen, sly bandito, searched your purse, the cabinets and kitchen drawers. You kept that freezer locked daring anyone to steal your hard work…always, always for people outside…
You are a small potato. Bigger potatoes are dancing to fantastic music in outer space, but you can’t go there. You’re a simpleton blown to bits by the cut and thrust of superior tubers, by the gravity of dancing. Your zen is here in the grocery store, moving through life as a good or service,…
The Last Time I Was Really Happy, Emilio Estevez Was Coaching Peewee Hockey Yesterday, while I was on my usual midnight pilgrimage, I was suavely walking down Richmond Ave. When I heard the quacking of ducks. I looked all around and didn’t see anything – And yet, the quacking persisted. I assumed there was…
Missing I ignore the peeling trim, bare spots on the lawn. A grocery list: beer, detergent. No warm dinner waits. I eat two bowls of Cheerios, drink the last beer, step outside to smoke. Stars blink. The dog paws the dirt and barks at nothing. By morning, I practice concern. Should I shave? What to…
At the mercy of such pristine majesty, everything manmade simplifies, like some haphazard fraction. No terrific, mottled Appaloosas—only the innocent infinity of their barnyards everywhere; simultaneous lengths of all time and roads compacted, creaking, and anonymously on display. Even at the bracing smokewhite of daybreak, all seems equally dazzling and incidental, slowed to a dead…
There are still spots on the carpet where you dripped blood My Dupont textured Saxony cut pile carpet, Off-white, like clotted cream oxygenated for an hour. Three spots left, of the seven You scrubbed vigorously. You see? you said. Abluted! You were shaking, cackling. I can see three when I bend my neck, And the…
The Bearer’s Pint Flash of tongue trails over pink lip matches your top flowered, loose in all the right places not quite to your jeans. The kiss can be deadly but is oh so delicious. Roman legions, it is said, used it as a rite of passage a toast of manhood. The Gelatissassin (after Hendrixson)…
Taken from the larder on a sultry summer’s day, generous pats of best Epping butter, delivered by Mr Thackeray every second Tuesday in the month. Sly taste of salty gold on the tip of a rounded silver blade. Spread thick, without thought of the dwindling scraps left behind in the dinky blue and white butter…