Category Archives: Poetry

Thursday the 12th [from “The Week,” a series of 7 poems leading up to Friday the 13th]

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thursfootprints

Thursday the 12th

Who stood there for so long
Between the road and the paved walkway

On the unmown grass as each child streamed by?

At ease, or mostly, for the prints are deep, and a casual
Shoulder width apart. Long there he stood, and not prepared

To run; yet the edges slur the grass as if he shifted
Weight from foot to foot, contained energy reined

By watchfulness. So he stood guard.

In the far corner of the school field
While morning did undizzy circles

in children’s shoes, each trip around
that gear of laughter pulleying the sun a few

Minutes higher up the year’s first flawless sky.

Wednesday the 11th [from “The Week,” a series of 7 poems leading up to Friday the 13th]

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Wednesday the 11th

The small city’s skyline is low-slung
Like tired dogs. A TV antenna, decades

Unused and tilted from last century’s
Storms — that could be my silhouette

Against the quiet valley gloaming —
Left out like a boy raising his hand

In a classroom emptying of light.

Tuesday the 10th [from “The Week,” a series of 7 poems leading up to Friday the 13th]

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deadend

Tuesday the 10th

A spring day as unsatisfying
As seeing the reflection

Of your math teacher
In the ice cream shop window.

Walking uphill to work
With two cups of coffee

Neither of which you
Can drink from because

Rain returning to the creek
Has undermined loose sidewalk

Bricks and because
You can’t remember

Which cup was yours.

Monday the 9th [from “The Week,” a series of 7 poems leading up to Friday the 13th]

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peoniesinsnow

Monday the 9th

You traveled
For the entire duration of your time in this shape

With the ease of falling
To be stopped a fraction of a second before

Fall’s finality — caught in a gesture going
The other way, like

Some make a trip to a place to forget it all
And take pictures to remember the trip

Sunday the 8th [from “The Week,” a series of 7 poems leading up to Friday the 13th]

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snow8th

Sunday the 8th

The way the weather ends
And begins a discussion

About everything surviving
The weather. The way

Unexpected snow falls
Like a silhouette of spring

Sitting patiently as we trace
Its shadow. The way the sun

Arcs like a baseball hit so far
It will land in the last parking lot

Ever, bounce off the hood
Of the car of the only person

Who stayed for the whole
Game. The way the car’s

alarm, like any true alarm
Will be silent. The way we

Keep score as if it all
Won’t be gone soon enough.

Saturday the 7th [from “The Week,” a series of 7 poems leading up to Friday the 13th]

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springsnow

Saturday the 7th

All the ghosts of the dogs
Afraid of thunder hide

Under the bed. The bed
Is not on a frame, two

Thick box springs on the
Floor simply shoulder

the mattress like Atlas,
or Sisyphus maybe:

Every night they roll us up
The hill of sleep and every

Morning we wake and crush
Hours of dreams into oblivion.

Underneath even that there’s plenty
Of room for the terror of loyalty.

I’d like to think the dog
Ghosts are what

Wake us up. They are more
Important than dreams

And they are afraid even when
There is no thunder, like today

There was spring snow, so light
That after hours it had barely frosted

The twiggy ground cover still waiting
For leaves. Under the box springs

The dogs shiver. The snowflake
Shatters like glass. Something left

Outside in the storm moans like
It is not the wind, after all.

Full

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march31moon

Full

It’s after cats but before owls.
The moon fills its pockets and hangs

Out behind the house next door.
Like the sky’s a comfortable side street

You can ride a skateboard or bike along
And find a new favorite skipping stone

You’ll hold onto until the next time
At the creek, which will be days from now

And you think of the curve of her shoulder
As she threw and the water was too

Respectful to swallow the stone, the
Three steps it took on the water and the click

Of it coming to rest on the other bank
And like that you’re rising, full of someone

Else’s light, up above the neighborhood
And the whole world can see you now,

Like the sun on her shoulder,
The whole world can see.

Five Devastating Kicking Techniques

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Five Devastating Kicking Techniques

kick

Pancake kick
Sit down into the kick
And spread out until you are irresistible.

Trophy kick
Hold a single moment mid-kick
Perfectly balanced and do
Not move the rest of your life

Winter Weather Warning kick
Promise vengeance. Promise no mercy.
Then walk softly and meekly past.
Then kick a week later.

Spring kick
Turn your kick into soft raindrops
That hurt nobody. Immediately
A million small green kicks emerge.
People come outside and beg to be kicked.

Love kick
Kicking the habit is
Just another kick.

Landscape, with highway litter

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Landscape, with highway litter

Off the main road the weather has herded
Things long forgotten on invisible avenues

Of air. Most of our paths are so transparent
We can’t see the end coming:

In a high branch a plastic bag full of wind
Perches like a hawk surveying the field.

Mid-March Snow

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march snow

Mid-March Snow

When people die their eyes change color
As their vision turns inward in the seconds

That close decades of doors. They hear brand new
Sounds from their bodies, of people walking

Away from their jobs for the last time, of a family trying
To sleep the night before they leave a house

Nobody will move back into, of the crew
After the show packing now-silent instruments

Into their individual velvet darknesses.
The brevity is a single color, never seen

Before. Like a snow just before spring
It redefines the shapes of things

And then melts away, too fast and too slow
For consciousness to follow. But one

Does, alone, catching up to an echo, of
eyelids sliding shut against snow’s sudden glare.