Posts for June 10, 2026

No safety threats identified.

They’ve shared a single pack of ramen every night this week.

Protective factors recognized.

They’ve not bathed in two weeks.

Case appropriate for closure.
 The oldest child sleeps with her shoes on.

Services declined.
 The mother cried before opening the door.

No environmental hazards observed.
 The refrigerator hummed empty all afternoon.

The lights do not work.

The water does not run.

I just want to help.

Case appropriate for closure.

It falls in fat droplets that go splat
like we all will someday. It cools my face
with something like the tears brought on
by Richard Siken’s new prose poems
and by seeing my dad after his stroke,
his hand swollen like a catcher’s mitt
and jaundiced, his arm in a sling and all
scabby from cancer meds. Did I cry
seeing both of my sisters and my dad  

all together for the first time
since we all went to Grand Ole Opry
on his seventieth birthday nearly ten
years ago, my younger sister, Shirlena,
cussing like a Judd Apatow
character— “I swear now, it’s my new thing,”
my older sister, Melissa, bringing
eldest daughter energy, fussing, cooking,
self-appointed President of this crisis?  

Did I cry because we grew up
in Seattle, land of rain, coffee,
and Kurt Cobain’s flannel sadness?
Or did I cry because my dad will die
soon, and (not much) later, so will I?
My face itched. Did I cut it, shaving?
I felt like I looked like I’d gone
bobbing for apples, face dunked
in a pool that turned out to be my mirror.

I’ll pick at the scabs of the

wounds you left me

Ready to use your past words

as I am fueled by envy

baring my teeth, seething

swatting, claws protruding

foam falls out of my mouth

Ready to lunge

Ready to run

Only to sit

Sit and pick

at the scabs of the

wounds you left me

Howdy doo, the beau-tee-ful
bluegrass song and field.
Banjo strummin’, heartbeat thuddin’,
Kentucky ale’s ate like a sin worth lovin’.
Yeehaw, these wild horses gallop
in southern wilderness of country men
with shotguns ready, their aim steady.
Foreigner or native? These Appalachian
mountains knows no difference, no defense
against the savagery wrought by mankind.
They brought themselves here, these white men
displacing color to each their own beauty.
Their hearts harden into black clumps of coal
that their kind wants to burn.

A wildfire burns on Jellico Mountain
like a thousand eyes glowing in the black woods,
a black velvet painting—pinpricked—the light
rippling through with such beauty, you forget
to breathe, flames blinking like luminous
creatures who live in the deep ocean lighting
their own paths. The flares lick the trees;
you feel the white heat and the rule of blaze,
you hear it as you exhale: the crackle
and sizzle, the clamor of tragedy
combusting as you drive away into the dark.

Osprey glides in, landing
on a high pine branch.
Dangling from its talons, a fish
flaps desperately, far
from its water home.
Osprey stretches
beats its great wings, eagle-like.

The bird clutches tighter, stomps
to quell the last flutter
and now, lord-like, surveys the scene:
sky infinite blue above, warmth of sun
on its wind-swept feathers.

A short flight to a nearby tree,
quarry hanging limp.  Crows caw,
watchful for what might drop for them.
The feast is intermittent–
a peck–
and then a scan of the horizon,
eyes always alert.  The vulture heart
always vigilant.

I hold a piece
of peach-colored coral
in my hands,
recording its rough
edges, the caverns
of the bone sponge,
the price tag.

The home goods store
is all around me
porous and thin,
the shelves shallow,
the lamps and frames
dim and false, perforated
by bullets of banality.

If only I could push
through this mesh air,
this fishing net
of halogen and bullshit.
Maybe in the next world
I would be holding
living coral, bobbing
in a cool blue ocean,
talking to sea serpents.

I can hear the waves
over the store speakers,
can taste the tropical salt
in between the gray
smudges of today.

Somewhere in the gaps,
there are impossible colors,
like something out of
the funny pages.

You think you’re an anchor?
Even if, you’re still useful,
a safe spot, tethered to many.

What can I do to keep 
from living trapped inside
my head? Who should I 

befriend? Who will listen 
to us beat the bad feelings out
like a dusty rug, floating

to the ground. They float;
so should you. A confidant
seems the only thing we’re missing:

we have food, a roof, a lover,
dogs, community, hobbies, children.
Burden to whom? Really,

you don’t drag people down. 
You’re lifting them up.

             Rich folks keep their teeth until late in life.                        
                            “Rich Folks, Poor Folks, and Neither” Jim Harrison  

with a mouth three teeth short of a box of Chicklets™
I lean on the dental school’s emergency clinic.
I sit agape below scrutiny and a surgical light.
Faculty says, “Consistent care…”
but they don’t tell me how I’d pay.

I ask about any studies;
they shake their masked heads.  
My mouth wanes, never waxes.
Two more speciments cry for unaffordable care.
Five years between visits yet no tartar.
I baffle them — my anomalous mouth confuses experts.  

“Brush your tongue,” they say.
Of course, I brush my tongue.
How else could my poems come out?