Category: Uncategorized
-
foster lot
it isn’t a wonder they upend mei was a ward of the state once and only forever will be againwith just 7 years in the systemi understand public property and servitudestraight white lines drawn around empty stuck spacesonly ever coming or going,no stayingor resolveonly waitingwith desire,and ignominyfor things that do not come to foster lots…
-
conscious uncouplet-ing
from the high tight corner of an old breakfront hutcha sturdy chain of glossy green leaves grows up and over and down the side of a cracked terra cotta pot.at once, the plant vine dangles then snaps in the chubby hand of a triumphant toddler below.the jutted brown stalk is left empty a second stem…
-
fairy tigers
an animated tigersings sweetly to my attentive daughterpretending words that don’t rhyme do:‘grooown-ups come backkkkkkk’ my children,(my dear, sweet, innocent children)are being raised by a woman whose grown-ups didn’t come backsome days it feels like i’m giving them more than i had just by being here-other days, all forgotten lies & fairy tales.
-
the school bus
it doesn’t stop in front of our house. ours is the kind of house no one stops in front of. stares at? sure. whispers about? certainly. but only ever from the safety of their moving cars or curious bodies. our bus driver’s name is kimberly, but she isn’t one; she’s tough, a single working mother…
-
always remember
last year, in time with the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, i listened to, ‘long shadow- 9/11’s lingering questions’- an 8-episode podcast by reporter and author garrett graff. it was a well done and disturbing yet beautiful depiction of what we all experienced in some way that fateful day, i as a twenty-year-old college…
-
good fortune
the view is aerial. you’re flying. on a train, through the sky. clickity-clack-zoom-zoom. you land in a place called texas but you swear the sign said “welcome armadillo”. either way it’s your family who greets you at the bus stop. or rather people who look like your family but don’t behave like them. when you…
-
freebird
you have a way with wordsshe said once, in earnest but all the words I ever spoke back then were all the words I knew she’d like to hear so really it was the words who were having their waywithme through trialand mostly error,I have discerned most people would rather notlook atorlisten toa grown woman…
-
the man on the park bench
beneath the spreading branches of a scotch pine treehe finds silhouetted beautyseated – still – solitaryships slip past the watery horizonbeckon, then roll softly byhe captures the canopied nature of the nothingness then-the way a hallowed archway enchants and frames herlike the anointed subject that she ishe returns here,to the wooden benchbeside the crooked tree,…
-
for bubba
there is a coolness in the air this morningmaybe it’s all the rain we’ve collected this weekor maybe it’s just time, slipping softly byeither way today is the day you left for the fourth gradei don’t know why the 1st day of schoolalways takes me back to your first day of life,to that stunning first…
-
an august sun
i was born with the late afternoon of an early august suna waxing sagittarius moon was high and day blind in the cloud-blue skyi was born a seekerin a sterile hospital, beside a shallow riverthat drifts and wades with tall grasses and state lines, even nowan entire country and most of what interests me lies…
santos scribes 