At the end of October, my poem “Stellar Cartography” was featured in Verandah #39, the Literary & Arts Journal of Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. One contract stipulation was that they would maintain copyright for the first year, after which it would revert to me. So, while I can’t post the entire poem here until …
Just another dayin a long chainlike Love’s Travel Stopsalong the interstate:get past onejust to get to the nextand the next,to the one, two, ten,a month’s-worth after that,chasing horizonsyou set high for yourselfwhen you were younger. The impulse, though,to just stop,give in to sleep(or something deeper)perforates, permeatesyour thoughts, so you listenfor a baying at the moon,a …
The control-room drones work their magic:Oh-three. Oh-six. One four seven five.Standing aloneTogether on our circular marks—The first time for eachBoth—we shiver,Unaware of how the magic works,Knowing only that on thisYourMyOur honeymoonDistant dreams await. At last the final sequence starts:Two. Eighteen-one. Fivesixfour. Streams of data,Yet bone, blood, mind—We fly.My hand in yours,Your heart in mine,Our minds …
Canting northward,catawampus compass needle,the headstone indicatesan uncertainly certain destiny,a terminal destination. Weathered by a centuryof snow, rain, wind, and sun,the marble worn faint,the markings remarkthe significance of the stone,the lines faded to illegibility,thin as a threadbare shroud: Somebody born in March,Eighteen hundred sometime,someone beloved somehow:Wife? husband? Perhaps.Daughter or son, certainly.Such is the stamp of mortality. …
for my students The poem was about death.The tyger, they said, is a monster.How, they asked, is that beautiful? First, the tyger is beautiful in its form:the symmetries of stripesand fiery balance of form with function.This monster is perfectionat thinning the herd. And, while death is anathema,the nemesis of the lyric form,the presence of the …
Once, I thought long, far too long, too hardupon possibilities, potentialities, predicaments—a weighing of costs, benefits, catastrophes,time lost, opportunities gained. Things, theyseldom appeared as conjectured, and I livedperpetually in (un)certain fear, until, happily(in retrospect), everything collapsed— the castle burned the slipper shattered the dragon devoured its tail the wicked witch went west the knight dismounted, set his horse running free—and eversince, I’ve lived …
“The most fitting subject for poetry,”Poe said,“Would be the death of a beautifulWoman.”And it isn’t that he was incorrect—The deathsOf beautiful women have inspired count-Less men: Ἰφιγένεια Beatrice Caroline Beaufort The Radiant Maiden (whom the angels name Lenore) Mina Harker Curley’s Wife Bambi’s Mom Norma Bates Gwen Stacy Beloved Alexandra DeWitt Lily Potter Jenny Calendar Trudy Monk And women whose murders, rapes, traffickings,TakingsProduce protests, marches, and poetryLike this. But did …
A midnight shimmer,the full moon’s shine lake-side brings the alderwoodvalley to false dawn. A fish—unclear whatfrom a distance—leapsfrom the water,a suffocating quarter second, trusting to (let’s say) a trout’sarcane faith in gravity’slogistical power,buoyancy be damned. Piercing the surface again,an intimation of (re)birth,as clouds wash over the moon,returning the valley to sleep. © 2023, 2024; first …
If on a winter’s night a traveller —Calvino She heard me say“Queen of Denial,”but I meant the other one.1I had tried like a Penzancian pirate2or enfogged, noir, Chandlerian3to insert myself asa credible suitorfor naught; my whisper,apparently, a mumble. Sine dubio,4 as Cicerowould have averred5yet erred,Los Corazones,6 mine and hers,should someday be entwined. Perhaps this wasan …
what is a butterfly?the thing itself,and all that it symbolizes,and its appearance in context:spring to summer to fall. dissected into its parts and pieces,fragmentations—the once beautifulbecomes nullified and obscene,the pastime of bullies and fools. a Sylphina Angel on a pinis good, at least, to studystructure, coloration, and form.but it loses all of the graceand much …
