The Valley of Sleeping Women
One iron-cold hour still divides night from dawn. Mist hangs smoke-thick over the river, a blanket to hide its endless motion. Outside the tavern, the tide-steady pulse of police lights throws an underwater glow over the parking lot, the knotted school of late drinkers shivering under clouds of breath-smoke, drawing the small fires of cigarettes […]
Janet Buck- The Laundromat
Day turns like chugging dryers. Time, a simple laundromat. Put a quarter in a dream. Watch the heat destroy the cotton of the field. Hours in wads too big to churn. He reads a tattered address book, scratching off the names of friends who’ve beat him to a pending grave. Heel up. Hold. Think. Be […]
Birdwatching
Incessant flight– I sleep in air that catapults garnered cloud, staring at moons, chipped porcelain, paint removed by probing page. Love below me on the ground, a broken china doll searching for glue as lonely women masturbate. A frigate bird and ship at war, wingspan wide, tailored to drumming old defeats until they promise fish […]
Pocket Change
“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish?” –T.S. Eliot As locust of grief gathers its legs for the pounce and traffic spins in its clotted grave, answer escapes by channel of fog. I am seized by the question’s thrust– turn toward ways you fanned a purse and opened […]
Good Luck
You’ve seen the flicks with the blasted hero, hunkering in the foxhole bleeding into black and white, clenched teeth promising the camera at least he’ll take one of them with him. All of us injured by birth, labor, marriage, vowing to lead somebody else into the ground. Lord, when I’m about to go under, […]
