Web-based Publications

I Don't Forget, Red Booth Review 10

Oh Squid, My Squid, Red River Review, August, 2002

Traditional Publications

I-44, Missouri

The prairie grass is
A translucent gold
Falling away from the roadside
And I am surprised at
How gorgeous the fields
Are in winter. I hated
Their green reek in July
My windows rolled up tight
Against the sour odor of
Ripening soybeans and
Rank-growing fescue.

Eighty miles outside St. Louis
And the billboards
Have changed from banks
And beer to UgotJesus.com
And Big Louie's Dancers,
My choices narrowed to sex
And salvation.

Since I still haven't lost the
St. Louis station
On the radio, I listen
To traffic slowing at Spoede
And hitting the breaks on
The Poplar Street Bridge,
And from this distance
the places I pass daily
That I drove through two hours ago
Are suddenly as famous and
Exotic as a Spanish cathedral.

For a moment I feel
Held by this land full of
Run-down Route 66 tourist
Attractions and Llama farms.
For a moment, I can believe
I could call it home.

(Phantasmagoria, 2004)

Architeuthis Dux*

The tide rolled
your sole body
leaden as Latin

onto Plum
Island beach.
Salt and sand

conspired to rob
you of your
satiny maroon

skin. Even so
we can't know
the clandestine world

behind your eyes.
How would I
look into a living

breadth as large as
my own head? Such
ancient sea-monsters

to fill the belly
of a whale. Sift our
visions of knowledge

with one holy
catholic terror of
the impervious.

You are my reverie
bequeathed to an age
beside faith.

--
*Giant Squid

(Tar Wolf Review, 2004)

Lessons in Retail

Women return thong underwear,
which are then put back on the racks.

Rather than buying new,
Some prefer to trade in their
bras and panties.
Using the dressing rooms
to this end is fine, but we ask
that you take the old stuff with you.

If you choose to spank your wife
with a spatuala over in a quiet section
of Housewares,
Loss Prevention will make sure
you're the talk of the store.

Children will blow their noses
on anything handy. Beware of
chenille sweaters and luxury towels
displayed at a height of about
three feet.

It is a sad truth that old women
feel compelled to tell disgusting
things about their feet as they shove
their naked toes into pair after pair
of white, backless Keds.

If I am wearing a name tag
with the store logo,
yes, I work here.

And by all means, if you are
incontinent, and making change
makes you nervous, let your
wife pay.

(The Jabberwock -- Mississippi State University -- 2003)

Anakephalaiosis

(Greek: literally, going against the head, recapitulation)

All things done badly should get
better endings. Yes. The rabbits
with beautiful eyes like black marbles
drowning in fear, these too. And
all teenagers who are spinning things
caught in the centripetal force
of their youth, irresistible to any trial,
their circuits whirring escape, escape, escape.
Yes, even the raw, retro roqueros of
Cuba with shaggy hair and craggy knees,
shot up with contraband HIV, dressed
in the international uniform of angst:
a black Led Zeppelin t-shirt. Their suicide
was a sparse abstract; rebellion, illness at
state expense, unity in death. Yes, a new
ending even for these foolish rabbits. As
their flesh shrinks, their eyes bloom
like the bright round
flowers that crumble from
the walls of decrepit Havana palaces
undulating frescoes abraded by the salt thrown up by
the Spirit swooping into the surf to greet
the new Marys and Josephs tossed as
secrets from the spray. Yes.

(The Jabberwock -- Mississippi State University -- 2003)

Turtles

turtles,
who are too sensitive
to watch their
children grow up,
are allowed to deposit
them on the beach
they dig moist holes
in buff sand to
lay away with grunts
and pants (oh, slippery turtle
lamaze!) their leathery responsibilities
abandon them to the
crush of other mothers
throaty desires of the hungry
and to uncivil seas
like children set afloat
by mothers who believe them
too good to endure.

(Mid-America Poetry Review, Winter 2001)

I Will Buy Your Books

They were not written in quaint city

gardens, bad restaurants, on hand-

carved desks or with pens having their

own history. I will read

what survived tiny hands hiding the

capless blue Bic pens advertising

George the Plaster Man under your

recliner one day. Perished lines

that found themselves only the first

layer of a Mead canvas graced

with a family portrait in

finger paint and glitter. Routine

to you is the precious secret

of not burning potatoes or

notes while writing in such stolen

quiet twenty minutes before

dinner. You have striven for those

metaphors defeated by nap-

time tantrums and diaper blowouts.

(MM Review, 1998)

A Buddha's Sigh

The Japanese and Chinese for thousands

of years measured time with incense.

A separate odor marked

each season, sign, moon.

We don't bother with spoons;

Our afternoons are measured out to go in

crinkly plastic buckets of half and half

And it is the custom house clock

chant of Spanish monks that soothes the

industrial soul, lulling it towards the

next job, errand, pleasure.

Between yin and

yang is a wall of time, a winding

down from years to

days, hours, and seconds.

Beyond, life is not measured in cpu cycles,

but in the secret

whir of a hummingbird's wings.

(Licking River Review, Volume 26)

Rio

Addled by the perfume

of gritty popcorn bubbling in

a scuffed tank and of

new urine, the blues-man sings for

his guitar and dollar bills and loose change,

competing with the accordion-man

on the outbound side pounding

out sitcom theme songs for

dollar bills and loose change.

Down into the tracks,

past the caution-yell

edge of the concrete platform,

manic baby rats play in

their creosote-soaked world,

hide under the third rail

while my ass gets colder and flatter

on the sharp but artful marble bench.

The rhinestone earring of

the man beside me

glitters dully in the filthy haze.

Let's steal these chairs, he says.

We'll make a fortune and

I'll take you to Rio.

Naturally I laugh, and when the

train moans into the station, get

into the adjacent car.

Rising again into a watercolor sun,

I ride the escalator behind an aged straw

that used its day to bop off the jagged lip

at the top. I push it over with my toe.

(Black Bear Review, 1995)

Reaction

I hope it is the cat hopping up for a visit

that causes the bed to jolt at this early hour,

as I slip my hand over to touch a damp, sweaty back -

muscles convulsing to serve a starving brain.

Forcing the ever-present orange juice through stiff lips

that take small, sugary swallows, I study the stranger's face.

No the face of the man I married:

The eyes have nothing behind them.

He speaks like a small child.

Who taught him to search a robe pocket for treats?

After I get him back, I try to sleep,

but the adrenalin won't allow it.

My arm persists in reaching over to feel his back,

to reassure me that it is rising and falling,

isn't sweaty,

isn't cold.

(Black River Review, 1995)

We Can Talk About It Now

the universal symbols

scratched nickle Zippos

grill-blacked hamburgers

fire and meat pop-lust

Cronkite's body counts or

another M.A.S.H. episode spun out

in black & white on the kitchen table

play same as

too-yellow Kodachrome afternoons

full of cicadas singing like electricity

complaining of the heat while we were

sunburning in the backyard plastic turtle-pool

the whisper men we couldn't touch

like cancer victims, stubble spreading

into golden-red manes and first beards

avoided on subway trains like hot burners

and boiling coffee pots

practice not looking

(The Penguin Review, 1995)