Posts for June 18, 2026 (page 8)

Being poetically misunderstood
comes with the metric.
So my poem about my
grandpop and sweet canned
peaches is thought sweet
and it is, but sticky rather than
Ripe. I meant to contrast
an unimportant grandson’s recollection
of syrup and fruit with an
unloved son’s
memory of meanness.

Mostly I meant to mourn how we are
reduced to almost nothing, a
pastiche of peaches,  93 years and all
we retain of the man
I called grandpop is an
image of sweet liquid with a
faint metallic
aftertaste.    

The geese drift in the breeze above the gilded lake
The beef sits in the freezer under the wilted cake
The creek drives by the bees on the way to the wake
Our cheeks burn red by degrees when riding the brakes
We ease our keys in the lock; we beg: do not forsake.

The pelicans dance over the beach 
Sandy wings dusting my sun hat
Tipped low towards the reaching waves 

The foghorn breathes over raucous water
clumsy in its pursuit to touch the land
fueling those reaching waves

cardinals light above the deck
Kentucky red in a seaside town 
their wings tipped low towards the reaching waves

Today is the anniversary
of Little

               Girl with Popsicle.
It happened by the lake,

eleven years ago–
she was there,

                            and then she wasn’t.

The Last House on Needless Street, by Catriona Ward

I’ll crack open my head
right goddamn now
and you’ll see
the lightning bugs
burst into the twilight.

My mind is full
of intermittent fire.

I’d rather gently
blow steam
in the shape
of a dead bur oak
than belch flames.

The lightning bugs will
take over the neighborhood,
twinkling like lighthouses
on distant cliffs,

or stars calling
for other stars
to drift over, to start
a constellation
that looks just like
a screaming antelope.

Oh dear
I seem to be swinging
like Mercury—a year
in a few days, back and forth.

Yet I am as in control
as a hearth can be, just
a mason jar full of grass
with holes in the lid.

Rainy, rainy, thank you, thank you

In 2011, sociologist Sherry Turkle published Alone Together, a pioneering study of the explosive growth at the time on pc desktops and especially the new cell phone of virtual environments like MMO multiplayer video games, MySpace, and Second Life and their potentially deleterious effects on human social interaction and relationships.

bite of the apple
in a corporate logo
how did we not see

Turkle identified on these new platforms an emerging “sense of place” where people in real world isolation were able to interact and build relationships as strangers behind avatars – virtual 3D personas very easy to name, author, filter, photograph, spoof, design, revise, fictionalize, anonymize, keep, delete and fruitfully multiply.

i remember us
driven to find each other
these days not so much

Six billion active smartphones cover the planet today providing opportunities to author and canonize unlimited liminal nominal selves to explore, game, reach, teach, create, earn learn, buy, sell, lie, cheat, steal, love, betray, fight, fuck, and form attachments of variable honesty and constancy without ever leaving home.

thrall of narcissus
black mirrors eating the souls
of those who don’t see

I won’t push your walls
But I’ll build mine up
So I learn the mistakes
Of the unarmed Trojans

I won’t ask too much
But I’ll believe my heart
Sacrifice for Posiden
And build my Ithica today

the coffee is too bitter, I drink you
chew your temper and swallow it down
expose your course hands, slipping off my gown

tender they know me, but trace me like new
careful, don’t wake the house, don’t make a sound
the coffee is too bitter, I drink you
chew your temper and swallow it down

morning light paints your face, pray it’s not true 
you cradle my face, press away my frown
sun peeks in, she whispers about sundown
the coffee is too bitter, I drink you
chew your temper and I swallow it down 
expose your course hands, slipping off my gown

                                            Junko Tabei was the first woman to “summit” Mount Everest (1975).                                                  She later scaled the Seven Summits (the highest peak in seven                                                         continents).                                                                                       

Men climbers shunned you
Disparaged your dreams
Thought you did it for money
Or to meet a man
But there are easier ways to find a husband
Warmer ones too  

In their eyes
You were a kitchen
A nursery
A sidewalk  

Your eyes saw
Wind’s glutinous thrash
Snow’s looming smother              
Mountain’s tragic heart
The next step upward