Category: Poetry

What an Orchid Eats

The orchid and its splitting leaves Sat drying out on the Tank of our toilet for a Year, uncomplaining about The noise, and the sheetrock dust, but, Most of all, The proximity to the Water it desired but could not Taste. Me and the orchid eyed Each other every damn day. Well, that is, what…

We Want… Beauty

Nightclub by Billy Collins You are so beautiful and I am a fool to be in love with you is a theme that keeps coming up in songs and poems. There seems to be no room for variation. I have never heard anyone sing I am so beautiful and you are a fool to be…

The End of Summer

August retreats. It hands us back the year. Summer isn’t truth, but it is (as Harris Telemacher recites) “What we wish were true.” So many of us Shove out this Season of perspiration, lazily Forgetting how it Slows us Beguiles us Presses us to hold still Find the windy spaces With a friend In the…

Fine Tooth Comb

Blue plastic comb Rosemary Spray Bother the louse And its tedium. Glass-half full? Long sessions Together on a Sun-warmed stoop Hand in her hair. Day 17, A River of Stones

The Wall

This heat has No name at all until You remind yourself He. Is. There. Exit the climate-controlled Iceblock Bedroom Only to hit The Wall. Day 11, A River of Stones

I Brought a Loofa

Private talkBetween campground showers“You need soap, Karen?”“I caught it!” “I brought a loofa.”Two women sighingOver water pleasure andFriends. Day 10, A River of Stones

Back of My Hand

I-74Across the Mississippi–That Familiar vein throughMy life I Cross this morning east.Your still flatness hides Lonely strongCurrentsPulling me back. Day 9, A River of Stones