They received a much needed shower this morning: bare branches of trees, Fall's fallen crushed leaves, Spring's new buds and blossoms,…
“Persephone is having sex in hell.” –“Persephone the Wanderer,” Louise Glück This isn’t hell, but it is the suburbs, and…
He told my Ma I was too young to know what a tumor felt like. Dad took us to the…
In life it was pen not people who were moved In despair the ink painted erotic, sensational scenes Censored for…
Grandmother made Dad and a bullet-hole in her chest. She kept a perfect record: circumference of wrist: 3 inches circumference…
The comfort of an elementary photograph pulls me from the digital archives of Instagram: I am kneeling to tie my…
again, and her hair changes color with the season, first day, now night. Eyes liner-keened, cigarette in hand, a mouth’s…
Most lunches I visit the taqueria. Today, I’ve waited a half-hour for my chilled tostadas, pored over the Parmenides—coiled serpents…
[bolt] noun A roll of cloth or wallpaper of specified length. As in: I sewed a humid Ozark summer with…
Pick apart literature never quite getting to the point Chafe fertility using scissors and tape Compose a song about circles…
I have aged a decade in the silence; it presses on my ears like new neighbors knocking on my door;…
what can i say about you? whiskey drunk and clothed in sage smoke, you are not a lover, no, not…
If I could speak I would say Zeus, didn’t you know? When you came to me, how could I refuse…
I can envision your pilot, roiling within his apartment that mourning—despicably frying eggs and renouncing your conception. As if your…
Sitting in the shelter/rain hitting tin roof/ spark of fire/paper lit/orange glow/smoke curling out/ feigning escape/snatched back into grateful lungs/…
We’re only here for the summer, living in tee shirts, sandals, Waking early, to watch sunlight rise over the hill.…
“What memory really keeps is the cargo, the equity we have in our life.” —Frank Gilbert when a wheel carries…
I break enough dishes to fill the recycling cart. When she runs away again, I stand in the backyard and…
A hundred years and more ago we fled Exchanging the sweet air of the mountains For the dust of the…
Hate yourself Blame your parents for the fact that you hate yourself Drown out your self-hatred with any number of…
#30 Our conversation always takes a turn toward garnish, toward thick lipstick gum flapping and other dressings- up. It’s seductive…
Lick your plate, place it on black granite rip French bread from the loaf & sesame seeds scatter as stars…
summing my nephew, his doctor avoids the anodyne, the passive voice which organs now are compromised, merely says he’s actively…
He stood outside the stoop to reveal himself as used, wanting work, a saw in the yard, jagged as jaws…
Today’s go-to for what ails: genetic explanations Poor language blamed on the ancestors genetic variants are the keys to language…
The incontinent walls are yellow, like they’ve pissed themselves. The air is so musty, it’s grown hair. Or stolen it…
I travelled across state lines to collect lavender for a woman I knocked on her door kissed the insides of…
I wanted to say hello on the plane, but You flipped your hair and turned away To stare out the…
And lo, ‘twas mighty Apollo the Sun who bore the challenge to the giant Orion, the companion of Artemis, the…
Demeter called me as I was working a graveside shovel. My blisters were bleeding and full of sand and salt…
I hear your hands unshackle my heart from its drawstring purse ;; shake out the bees in my leftover knees…
I. The ceiling is low, walls high, lamps glare from all directions. Light shafts like broom handles poke the gut,…
If only they were obedient, then the benzene, chloroprene, aniline, and burnt-down churches with spray-painted, proud swastikas etched on the…
The same young couple passes me in the street every four or five days. I smile at her and nod.…
I empathize: six days stuck inside our house. Believe me, I’ve tried to snatch you in mid-flight and walk you…
So many years have passed since that day We first gazed upon Baby Paul’s chimerical image Obscured in a blizzard…
It was a sort of stab, a slash and release in the left shoulder, you know, from a point that…
“I might as well be invisible,” says his cardboard sign. We stare at the veteran in the subway station, slumped…
1911: a year of golden shores. Of brass futures, pomp And heirloom circumstance. The saxophone born to blow. “In the…
You sleep the deep of angels, in folded wings as closed as silence. You lie beside me, separated by the…
The crew of the Enola Gay recorded the time of impact of the hydrogen bomb as 8:16. The official recording…
She asked me if she could take my bread I was fond of her so I said yes Although it…
We drank blue Kool Aid to turn our lips blue, wobbled bicycles down the acequia, watched for the dead things…
My cousin, on the cheek; this was before she was a lesbian, before I got PTSD, before she got remarried,…
Had Vermeer been around in 1990 he would have painted this: soft Ontario morning light pouring through the bay window…
There’s a low point in the yard, a depression, a smooth hollow where moist feelings puddle after storms. It’s a…
In the morning, I broke the earth where the cabbages would bloom and Brother Tom introduced me to John of…
i love it when a book smells like coffee. smells like cigarettes. like an unidentifiable existential crisis that i just…
Group couples therapy was what I expected -- the basement of the Unitarian Church, cookies, decaf, and off-brand ginger ale.…
When I’m asleep, after four minutes my molecules disperse around the universe. They float about until they realign in the…
a brown haired beautiful pianist who played Brahms, Mozart, Schumann and who wanted a Minnesota child, family, home but she…
Rage 1 Rage becomes me because rage made me. Rage 2. These are not lacerations. They are the cuts I…
There’s my father walking from the blue line station down the colosseum steps of City Hall Plaza, one careful leg…
you lived in italy amid the ruins generating whispers or even codes (of conduct) listened to the statues the arguments they…
After we moved away, drought and wildfire scorched and burned away half the town and my bedroom where my smooth…
You are four in a canned food aisle with your grandmother when you see a rouge-cheeked man in a blond…
the electricity is on but the WIC is burning low and drowning in spermaceti like the seventy-cent-smart per pound-foolish chicken…
Cross-legged, hunched over, threading, knotting, the knuckles of his spine arc down his brown back. The fisherman pauses, puts his…
" my limbs grow heavy and my sight grows dim " The last words of Socrates I too as the…
the softest part blessing in disguise recognized landscape, mindscape, dreamscape symbols and stories for those who know and live more…
There is a cavity in most great things: doughnuts have holes and memory has spaces for all the terrible to…
you fuck your way across the country, peddling Bibles and gas-station condoms I read your letters you can’t come home…
The white space no longer white pulses. Drips of ink vibrate the paper. Whispers of indented secrets, former trysts forgotten,…
Two state troopers entered and promptly checked every face. They led a handcuffed man to the door amid customers' voices,…
At the break of dawn of Kali Yuga. Amongst the sand dunes, the oceans. Humanity's ferociously rippling commotions. The dismembered…
Not quite a coat hanger, the boy stands skinny tall in Boy Scout khakis and Converse tennis shoes, hands behind…
When you find yourself Shouting From a pulpit Of limp socks Hot with passion Having something To do with chores…
The boy drew his name in the fog of his breath, on the window looking over the garden built around…
A couple in China wanted to name their child after the email address symbol @, which in Chinese is pronounced…
Insecurity to the Point of Not Being Able to Fantasize About Sex but Only the Uncomfortable Morning After (Because for…
You walk into my office barefoot stepping softly on the cracking eggshells, pale blue and tell me in this radio…
Most days I’m okay, Hardly any, if I’m being honest Today is no different. I dress myself complacently. Routine. Shirt,…
My nerves are awake from their odd sleep. An engine’s growling guttural barges in like Some wreckage of my so-called…
There were no instructions And everything had a glitter With nothing in between Even for the mind There was no…
March 15th, 2019 – Across two mosques, fifty Muslims were murdered as they gathered for the weekly Jummah prayer. Outside…
My father loved to whistle. When he was off alone, working on one project or another, you might well have…
If Plato could dissect my body he would find olive dove and grapevine If Nostradamus could predict what would happen…
**Click the image for the full poem. Todd Hathaway is just a guy who writes when his insides are full,…
"I heard that Commentary and Dissent had merged and formed Dysentery.” Woody Allen through Annie Hall’s Alvy Singer Burned out…
I was walking to school with my eight-year-old daughter for the record, I was not walking her to school I…
You rule, revel, rest in your cell, I hear. The world seeps in, to your feet Through iron bars. Bent…
I sit here quietly at ease in my recliner aware of my good fortune smiling contentedly taking inventory of my…
If we are fortunate enough to survive all manner of bodily insults and land relatively unscarred in old age, we…
having pulled the egg carton out of the fridge, I stand anchored with both hands on the counter trying to…
When the sun goes down my father climbs into a hole shaped liked the outline of his crane- folded body,…
The train rides empty on the side of the river Inhabited only by a few commuters and robbers After crossing…
The endless ways, the days and nights, secret shakes, coded notes, smoking behind the shed, the specific details of fornication…
She will die above the down arrow, given sufferance by panhandlers on the street. Her character will be celebrated with…
it was a wedding - my aunt. and I'd been asked to give a speech. I can write ok but…
Imagine the anarchy. Where murderers are on billboards. Where thousands are killed with no consequence. Where women are beaten, killed…
I move through the day, working with the tools at hand, listening to the noise in my head, trying to…
In droves they flock southwest for warmth and waters in airliners buzzing the palms of Balboa Park, where fountains spout…
Maya Youssef spoke to me about war, And I have never before, Felt the gravity of tragedy in music, Until…
Never lie to a dog. They remember everything. The way you smelled when you promised them a walk at the…
My grandfather gave me a nickel Old, Indian head, buffalo back The Indian looked sad like my father Big nose,…
My brother is a bloodstain on the mattress our parents threw out and the sanitation engineers refused to set aflame…
she says " i'm glad you came, there's something for you, a real treat" and drops a packet of old…
There’s a lot of grass, Not many trees. We might drop a cow or two in For authenticity’s sake. #…
In front of the congregation my voice falters, a memory hits me like a brick. He stood out among the…
They are opening the door to me, a stranger with a notebook, whose name they will forget tomorrow. I walk…
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