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A Pirate's Life for Thee

My friend would burn his life down every seven years like clockwork. Ticking with machinations clicking into place. Spinning gears and locking levers grinding grains to pit a smooth surface. Pawl and pinion finding broken teeth, a balance wheel beating out of rhythm set on a broken jewel and trigger

The Regular

"You want your usual, honey?" sung in the lilting tones words take in the mouths of nurses trying not to break bones with the sticks and stones of reality. The sing-song honey, dear, and darling of order pad hospitality and concern, just like mom used to make but

Look Not Upon the Sun

Bleach barren and hollow we are withering in locked stares of unregistered concord like chemo patients tied in stalls of a communal barn. Tube to machine in recliners wrapped in the benevolent warmth of smallpox blankets carrying antiseptic plagues. In the silence we hear our internal workings being gnawed away,

Crocodile Tears

The passengers shout: Stay away from our boat! Your crocodile tears won't shame us. You have tears but tough skin and sit too long alone in ancient, hard un-needing. Our gods do not cry, and we do not care if they do, for ours are the true tears

Yellow Charon

Tell me, O muse, of the man of many devices who ended his wandering of the boundless wild world And settled in the silent safety of the suburbs. The hermitic Hermes solus paterfamilias Who morning rises to drag his daughter to the bus Packing bags like a mule with caduceus

Shadow Tree

There, there little tree. I feel you shiver and I know the night is cold, but our cabin walls will hold off the frost. Remember not the summer sun to cast a shadow in the corner of every room that trails behind from year to year and whispers in the

Kudzu

I’m beginning to see myself as a derelict home. My face is furred in a marbled gray beard I couldn't imagine being able to grow as a teen. A receding hairline of distressed design flailing out in midlife crisis strands too long to look cultivated but too

Laundry Sisyphus

One must imagine the laundress happy under the busy street in a steam filled cellar peering out the dusty pane of a hopper window to the shoppers above who collect coupons and stack discount mailers on the counter. Still, laundry Sisyphus scours common delicates reeking of lye and blinding with

Haiku 3

Small green sand bucket Holding my daughter's laughter Ebb tide pulls away

Baby Talk

Tear-filled fear at the start and then the excitement of buying a high-end stroller we pushed around the mall filled with doll clothes and music boxes in preparation for our still imaginary fare. That night, I caught you round bellied, surveying my construction of the crib. Your expression frozen in

Chapter 7: The Drive

Chapter 6: Ferris Wheel

Phrenology

"Hey daddy, do you have a picture of just you in a frame? So I can remember you when you die." The memory of you, silhouette against the lake, pensive and staring out into reflections and ripples, casting a net of thought, almost indistinguishable from the pillars of

Chapter 5: Breakfast with Friends

Chapter 4: Repentance

Once a month he made the drive to visit his parents. Usually on a Sunday. His mother liked him to go to church with her, so he rose before dawn. He stood in the kitchen drinking a cup of coffee, looking out the window and wondering how far Mr. Smallwood had progressed.

Chapter 3: Sleepless

The dirt road curved out over blind turns, each holding some hidden trailer or dilapidated home tucked away behind the trees like guarded fortresses aged and forgotten in their self-imposed isolation.

Chapter 2: Feeding Time

By the time he reached the feed barn it was a little after six in the morning. He put the wheelbarrow under the shoot and pulled the chain releasing a deafening stream of pellets that fell in a dust cloud which smelled of molasses and grass.

Chapter 1: The Dead Land

He sat staring into the coffee watching small vines of oil with pale gray leaves of steam swirl into existence within the stained porcelain wall of the cup before blowing off the surface in gossamer threads that disappeared in the air.