Poetry

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

“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 the dock

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 short to

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

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

“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 made to

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,

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

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

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 of suffering.