Cold Blue Steel
The days are short in mid December. You have to chase light, what little of it is left to catch. But without sun there is drama, a pull to water …
poem
You know how I like barbed wire
You know how I like barbed wire, how it twists Around old wood How fenceposts lean; how I like to find a good place To sit down on …
graveyard dredge: a poem
I it’s hard to think now, how men with their shovelfuls and boatloads and sideroads mixed the best color, the good rock, the pay streak, the bedrock. Get a good …
Red Flagged
McClennan RED FLAGGED She hugs her baby, pats his bottom sets him on the floor, in the center, where spectators form a ring and watch. The “experts”: social worker, …
riding the circumference of Lake Superior
riding the circumference of Lake Superior around the lake that breathes like an ocean a curve of sun tracks our faces: we plow into winds, watch a cloudburst bloom and …
Sanctuary
The snow kept falling and ice seized as winter pressed dark and hard Exhaustion mounted layered high as the banks of a deep river draining your strength, dry. Though no …
Annunciation
Time and time again, I’ve had a recurring dream. I am riding my bike toward a large, Victorian house on a pleasant, tree-lined street. I stop in front of the …
Negative Rays
Color is a sort of medicine; when the sky is blue, we stay…but when the sky is exhausted, turns ashy & dull gray we turn away. some would …
HOWL
Not the Ginsberg “howl” not the hootin’ and hollerin’ howl, but an eager craving rippin’ through spent leaves, howl awake and wild, soft nerves on fire. An …
Have You Ever Tried?
Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches by Mary Oliver Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives— tried to imagine …