You collect your pretty, pretty things on the shelf for everyone to see. Caveat emptor! Had I known then, what I know now, the person I would be.
Category: Poetry
The Second Calling
The Second Calling I Do you know why I want to believe in ghosts? The night you died, the phone broke through our wailing. I answered a screen filled with zeros to echoes of silence. II As they wheeled you away, I kissed your forehead, the cold radiating through me like winter glass my frostbit…
To Matt
your image recedes, like a silhouette beneath dark waters the presence known by the points of light left in its wake, the way phosphorescent algae bursts to life as you swim. You cut through darkness with brilliance that hovers and shimmers long after you have glided beyond. Yet when I close my eyes you are…
Five elegies (elegy 5: the victim)
bound by blood red ribbons that had held her hair, a cloak of black engulfs her head— blinding her eyes, stifling her pleas as she awaits the next touch of his cold blade. She feels only her naked skin and open wounds, cold and hot, but has lost the ability to feel her body in…
Five elegies (elegy 4: the boyfriend
He stares at her picture: golden highlights, swinging in the hammock next to him. she was so wonderful to touch. her last breath is a question to him: her thoughts, prayers. What did he do to her before she died? How much did she suffer? he digs his nails into his gray sheets, wondering: where…
Five elegies (Elegy 3: the younger sister)
a dress is not worth so much as this. the fight should not have happened. cotton and stitch. But it’s mine after all, I am not to blame. I didn’t tell her to go. she had plenty to wear. So what if it matched her gray sweater. I should have gone like she…
Five elegies (Elegy 2: the father)
He must be strong not to cry. His wife needs his strength. As he walks into a world of satin lining, he thinks of her Prom. The satin and lace gown had flown around her like flocks of dappled canaries. Yellow is her favorite color. This satin shall shroud her. He winces. The gray light…
Five elegies (Elegy 1: the mother)
gone. (looking at palm) the hand feels empty. madman. flashing: gray, black, white. a little girl in bathing suit, squirting water from the hose at the camera. gone. why not some other mother’s baby? she wonders: will the body ache for the loss of love like the ache after birth for the loss of…
Blaming David
your smooth flesh is marble, etched hard muscles like no man [save supermodels] evanescent beauty is forever yours vita brevis arta longa the mold of you casts a shadow across me still how did you find the time to perfect mind and body and still work 40 hours each week? my beauty is rain in…
If food is culture…
I do not want to eat some watered down bastardized version of Moo Goo Gia Pan. I want to eat real Chinese food. I do not want to eat complacent middle American tacos and burritos. I want authentic Mexican food. I have had enough hamburgers, artificial flavors, artificial colors, reconstituted chicken product and processed cheese…
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