honeydunce

In the Atlantic
where ships fall apart,
you talk about building a house there.
You use your hands, eyebrows, entire body
to say things like
property line, blueprint,
community.
Halt the explanation
to take your waiter’s hand,
lips against wrist whispering
“and you will be my gardner.”
Playing pretend pours out of you like water.
Only Alices are left, pedaling for the keyholes.

we kissed–
you sulfur’d match,
me surface.
dagger of boat through waves,
one of us construction,
the other paper. The bite
of the scissor slice.
Better than the books and
right in front of my teeth.

If you like short stories and beautiful writing(the kind that engages all the senses), then you should read this book. I’m about 25 pages from the end and I’ve been singing its praises since page 1. It’s such a wonderful thing–to be reading this book right now while I’m editing my own. The bravery of […]

I feel like I am courting myself with all of this current book editing. There are days when I hurry home because I know the work is there waiting for me. Like some beautiful thing with a hand on the hip, front porch under feet slanting. Or standing in the middle of the road with […]

Start covering the mouth of 10 thousand sirens
calling us back
a wreck within reach
I am tied to the bow and the salt from the spray
is rotting my teeth.

In the car, waiting for people to decide whether or not they will cross the street, while they seem to be standing in the middle of it walking like molasses. I mutter something to the tune of, “it’s your world folks–i just live in it.”
But wait–scratch that, reverse it–it isn’t your world at all […]

On May 1st I went back to Dayton to read at a tribute for a fellow poet who passed away. Doug. There was a giant box containing hundreds of his poems, all of them written by hand on everything from notebook paper to flyers to small folded bus schedules. My hands shook plucking through the […]

the new pillow.
Makeshift midnight in the midafternoon
is my first time on the new pillow.
Promises on the package like
Firm,
for back-sleepers and side-sleepers,
yet beneath neck
another miracle made of flames,
the vice of nothing, the vice of air, the vice in vice.
My hands slither in position, numb paws
palms pressed against the underbelly of this purchase,
wish for […]

“Do everything with a mind that lets go.” - Achaan Chah
I can’t go into the next ten with anything but a carry-on, and the contents must be shit worth carrying on with. The stuff I touch often, the things that tether me well but release when ready. A roundabout way of saying in forty days […]