Sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter

Sometimes the taste is sweet,
sometimes bitter, and along the dusty hills
chambered with vegetation…

Smokehouse Alewives

The day was drowned in beer,
 soft sunlight leavened by heavy leaf cover,
 smoking pit sizzling with the last whimpers
 of…

roads marked out in death

The sunlight was caught 
in a net of rosemary and lavender,
bright starlight in black nights, 
with full moons…

Like an exiled king

Slipped out at dusk like an exiled king,
found the cobblestones slick with blood,
on a cloudless night hours before sunrise…

Dessicated

The dead line up in regiments — 
it’s always about time — they march
to ghoulish drums with femur sticks
and rib cages played like…

Almost In Season

Dedicated to everyone who lives somewhere that gets invaded in the next few weeks by folks who ain’t from around here. (That’s…

In Antiphon

When hearts break hard in antiphon,
their thoughtless chatter echoing
like cave bats fiercely chattering,
or Pegasus tamed by the hero…

The Water

The water is moving in mystery,
and on a rainbow splice, some skitterbug
slides, on a slick rail line, whooshing,
gushing, here the…

The Image of the Key

The image of the key, imprinted,
carved ceremoniously like an instinct,
like an infant’s first breath, a scream,
or the…

Bolivia’s Navy

The sun is moist, high in the sky,
like a half-sucked butterscotch with its edges melted.
It isn’t quite there, stuck on a pendulum…