Fall The way the leaves curled was like little crowns. Only in Autumn. Small naked kings running through the neighborhood, their faces glistening with the glaze of apples, fighting over the kingdoms of pumpkins. To arms! To arms! they cried, paying no attention to pending snowflakes— it would only take one or two— that soon,
Nightingale Boards It is never a question About what is true. While my mother was grocery shopping My grandfather would sit On the metal bench outside With the other old men And they would smoke Their camels and pall malls And burnt pipes and they would tell stories About crops and tractors And memories of
Things must be in this order then: Opinion, size, age, shape, color, noun. And so on. It is an easy enough thing to remember. Sweet small young round brown bear. The mnemonics of our lives. Don’t say it another way. You will be made to believe that your stupidity unmeasures you. Language is the leash
To be distrustful of questions is the best way to translate three ravens clustered in front of a house I was considering buying. Even just a few months ago I would have steeped the moment with symbolism. The sheen of wing. Their beaded eyes that know roofs. And trees. But no demarcation lines. Before I
It is a cave we can only see at low-tide, the moss drifting like the hair of drowned mermaids, the sea-stars clinging futilely to the rocks.
Sitting on a bench at the dog park a younger woman, someone who I assumed was intelligent because she was attractive, said to me, “You have a dangerous dog breed.” A single man has to double-consider statements like that. When God leaned over to Adam with that fingertip cosmic spark I’d like to think he
It was always New Year’s of a sort I guess. That book was last year’s gospel. You can’t read it anymore. Here’s a new and different one. It was like getting dumped in junior high by a girl. Everything had changed! You leaned blind against the wall. That night at home there would be mac
