Massey set the bird free.
He knew its blueness
Longed for the blueness
Of sky, its glass fragility
The delicacy of dogwood, Continue reading “Massey Set the Bird Free”
Tag: nature
My Back
The chiropractor tells me I have the toughest back
He has ever seen. He can’t crack me
On the regular exam table. We move to another one,
Where my feet are strapped down, and he stretches
My legs and rotates them, then tries again. Continue reading “My Back”
In Dead Grass
In the field of dead Johnson grass,
The red-winged blackbird landed.
It swayed the desert-colored stalks
With its weight, then held its place.
Like a swollen tick plucked from a dog
Then dropped, it did not move.
From this distance, I could not see
What suspended it there, what attraction.
Eating the World, Part 2
The park forty years later is still green half the year,
and empty, though its emptiness courses
from indifference rather than vandalism, created
by children no longer running barefoot down a hill.
I had to pass the bully’s house on the way
to the park. The house was patched together
with plywood and the weeds hid snipers
with slingshots and rocks big as my kneecaps. Continue reading “Eating the World, Part 2”
The Adult’s Song
So once upon a time
When we bricked rectangles of hay
into our houses, we suffered acne
and the dream of escape,
A stepfather who smothered your smile,
The deadness of hours never ours.
Open your heart.
Open your heart. Continue reading “The Adult’s Song”
What I Should Be Doing
I should be mulching the garden and vacuuming,
Removing cat hair from the carpets at the same time
Each one plots more release of it from under the couch
and atop the TV. I should be planning the next chapter
of the novel that will finally get published and I should Continue reading “What I Should Be Doing”
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 