They know the price of everything, Hatchet to rake, handsaw to lantern, Pflueger reel to Peters shell. Prices go up through the years. They always keep track. So they know what it costs To chop, to burn a pile of leaves, To let the blade drift through a plank Welling yellow sawdust, To light a […]
Under the nervous street light The cat crosses over stealthily Pausing at the edge Of the darker side. One eye flashes And it’s gone Into the margins. Black impregnates black The seed of a dream Behind the slumbering houses. I flutter through empty space A little man with little wings And a mouse’s tail. Suddenly
She lay on her back next to the fire, covered in a patchwork of animal hides. Her leathery flesh, now barren of fat and muscle, would soon mingle with the earth that once nurtured her. She coughed, and her rattling breath delivered a misty offering to the indifferent stars. Childhood memories flashed through her thoughts,
He’s a pencil sketch implausibility of a bird, high-stepping it out from the rain-drenched rushes of the pond’s edge, his neck a skinny swoosh you could almost miss, making the parabolic drama of that bill the more startling still. He reacts to some invisible shift in the wind or stirring in the pond-scrabble round his
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In the corner of the park, thick-bodied children splash violently in the waterworks, blameless until that day they too inherit parental guilt. Careening spastically into each other and shrieking under the blistering sun, they don’t yet question the mistakes made for life on Earth.
The moon was not in season while we were there. Horns honked and roosters crowed at sunrise. The North said “Yo,” the South said “Vo,” and ghosts are always hungry. The dead sleep by rice fields. When they’ve rested a year their bones are raised and washed clean – like a newborn – then buried