THE SENSE OF BEING LOOKED AT Around the corner, footsteps. A heel clicking stone. The slosh of loose gravel and then the no-sound itself conspicuous— even the crickets hold their breath, hush their rough legs while deep inside houses women reading bedtime stories pause to change their endings, one good wish at a time. A …
THE MEMORY OF WATER It can be demonstrated with thermo- luminescence: the salt solution retains knowledge of what it once held, though nature, though logic would tell it otherwise. Dumb as a bedpan, the hydrogen bond remembers the lithium, the sodium chloride no matter …
WHITE NOISE Listen. How the wind whispers our secrets. How a light rain will speak any language. –from American Fractal first published in Poetry Midwest
SADDLED Love is a horse, all sweaty suede and lean muscle, heart bigger than its head. Love is a dark horse, the unexpected silhouette, the anti- man’s empty field—no shadow unattached as darkness clings to light like a dead horse. Look: I can make a dove with both hands. Now a dog, a horse, an …
COOKING DINNER Spring again. Its warmer breeze. Open screen door. Another war buds up, pliant and green, thick spores of restlessness like pollen in the air–you could sneeze with it; your heart could stop beating in a moment. ____bless you, you’re whispering. …