Grandad read me manga, tales rendered in Chinese ideograms that made no sense, on the settee exploring a black-white world, antics of a time-travelling genie-bot.
Kin where kin are; The Armoury; Last Rights; Nota Bene; Playing in the Wind
The children we won’t have; How my life compares to that of Bonnie Parker; Bob Lucy’s apple juice; An evening with Messier 13; Tri tri try
I wake at 3:00 a.m. and fry two eggs until they burn. My husband sleeps upstairs. He used to photograph my eyelids, knuckles, fine bones of my pelvis.
Springsteen; If I were 18; I-89
If I were 18, I'd race across black ice parking lots with a crowd of strangers and a stranger holding my hand. We'd fall away into loud forgotten hours...
A Random Collection
Twenty years married Our lovely Mrs Smith Had a million and one hobbies To please Uncle Smith. From six in the morning Till the late afternoon She spent away baking, Cooking, and cleaning spoons...
Sack as a Unit of Measurement and Four Other Poems
Midas Itch
Add your own voice to the chorus The heckling harmony Shrieking oxygen-deprived squall Pockets full of liquid smoke Drenched denim from crotch to knee A little capsaicin in the air, on your fingertips Brings the burn with each careless touch The Midas itch to join in, to be drowned out...
Hand me down dresser; Open House at Your Childhood Home; Birthday Card From the Mortgage Company; Driving Home, 3:00A.M.; Family Pictures in an Antique Shop
Three decades later, it's all askew: everything your family owned given away after your mother passed. The gray carpet with foot tracks Worn into it, replaced by hardwood with gaps between the planks.