I am safe in harbour, but that’s not what I was built for Lights of shore I keep back pocket snug with buttons, lint, coins to be placed on moon-scrubbed eyes. Ripples that shudder headlands as they beach surrender to shifting sands unfurling strands of seaweed, rushing back to nightly waters where barnacles wait to…
Padre Island, State Beach The husbands have left their wives, and thereis a little girl on the sandbar trying to bend spoonswith her little head. The detritus of the garbage dumprolls in – used needles, seaweed corpus. Driftwoodused to be the bark of a mangrove, of a ginkgo,but now it’s just wood. The names, all…
Plaque For A Kelp Forest Praise to the oxygen producers! Those underwater ropestossed and tangled in the gyres. Up, up to the second skyand wriggling about, housing the sea lions and whales against the teeth and pounding storms. But, oh, how can praise be expressed in a tongue foreign to you! Plantsdon’t speak, barely see… And…
Our Little New Atomic Age Out again with your blue-grey filter calling for that darkly, sick boyhood, the search for years you cannot Un cover— they dredged the coastline twice and then said Goodnight and you kept going; wondering, wishing, withering from the sinking feeling, the wrought belief that Love is not a…
LAST EXIT BEFORE THE TOLL as the songs wind down and the speed limit drops to village limits, i hope i can see you again(i don’t think you know how much i really do love you, and most of me hopes you never do – may be awkward) thank you for everything, amigue back in…
Shipwrecker’s Ball Our nighttime here upon the sea has slowed down to a crawl,In a whiskey fit, we’ll sink our ship to host our Shipwrecker’s Ball. Send out the invitations, catch the harpies on the wind,There’s no need for decoration for all the times that we have sinned. Our skeleton crew has come to terms…
Womanhood (a found poem with words from Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath) i have done it. i manage a miracle —my skin bright, my face featureless fine linen.do i terrify? nose, eyes, teeth, breath, will vanish in a day.soon, the…
And More Importantly, Why You Should SKIP TO STEP FOUR IF YOU HAVE NOT NOMINATED PIECES FOR PUSHCART YET You have a little magazine or a small book press with eligible entries (see step 2) you published in the past year. How the status of ‘little magazine’ or ‘small book press’ is defined appears to…
Or, I’m Having a Mini Writer’s Strike Alas, some trite updates. If you enjoyed Infernas, a darkly queer satire of The Divine Comedy, here’s how things are coming along: While readership has been good and sending out copies has been steady, I recently had to pause publishing. Here’s why: The distributor I’m using is slow,…
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving It’s been a year- let me tell you this yearLucy said Kick it and we did. Again.She promised; assuaged, dissuaded our fear,said she’d Let us kick it as her ‘dear friend,’ but Lucy really wanted a good laugh.She watched us flat on our back, blacking out,tripping over two left feet and…