to tip the scales into crazed
one storm mother nature lakes and rivers and waterfalls flashing skies and frightened dogs dripping and puddling and strange new spots of darkness
no control
just let it be
the concept was clear the practice was vague
so I ran away from home
to clear the storms from my head
Suddenly the grey goes down.
A thousand pounds of horseflesh land
where earth is soft and muddied brown,
and with him, helmet for a crown,
the girl’s ride strays from what was planned.
Suddenly the grey goes down
and time suspends the rider’s frown
as both meet gravity’s demand
where earth is soft and muddied brown.
Dragged under, she fights not to drown,
flings feet from stirrups to disband.
Suddenly the grey goes down
and covers her, a big white gown
of crushing weight – can lungs expand
where earth is soft and muddied brown?
But here she finds her earned renown,
for somehow she gets up to stand.
Suddenly the grey goes down
where earth is soft and muddied brown.
In the courtyard I scent the breath
of the Eternal City,
mingled stones and vegetation
sighing with the ages—
remembering who has passed here
by the scholars’ Aula,
where dreams
and dogmas dwelt
in reasoned Latin.
Here under fading frescoes of our fathers and mothers,
saints and several monarchs,
I pause this morning
and breathe their passage,
until the smell of the laundry
reminds me—
even today’s occupations
share the perfume of eternity.
I am of Kentucky,
suburban-raised,
Tudor-style down the street
from Starbucks and Panera,
far from hollers and
gravel roads to algae-capped
ponds where bullfrogs croak
away on summer evenings
like they believe there’s no tomorrow.
Ashamed to say
so little do I know about coal
or the harvest of tobacco,
but I can attest to
the river that flows
past my city,
the seam it cuts
through the valley,
its cold, black heart
when flooding,
yet most days lazing
the color of cured leaf,
and sometimes,
it seems out of vinegar
and spite,
that of the weak whiskey
they make down
in Tennessee.
I keep my house key in my back pocket
I don’t need it anymore
Mom and dad got a padlock a year ago
I keep my cuticles on my tongue
I worry them until they bleed
It’s become a pattern
I keep my memory on a thumb-drive
I don’t know it like I used to
I forget what you did to me
But I still don’t crawl back
The rumbling of my engine worries me
But I don’t call
I broke a promise I made to myself
And that’s something you will never encourage from me again
A few hours after hatching
North America’s only perching duck,
Takes a Fluff-filled death defying
dive from the nest
to the hard forest floor below
The height from which they leap
is astonishing, 30, 50 ft
Their wings are but nubs
And they bounce on the ground
After ricocheting off branches or plant life
to join their mother below
Sometimes I feel a kinship
with those ducklings
As each fluffy feeling of mine plummets
into the public sphere of LexPoMo.
It doesn’t hesitate too long,
doesn’t consider whether it’s truly ready
Or equipped to deal with what hard blows
may result
Sometimes a mere hour after birth
The wood duckling discovers flight
before it’s grown wings
The First Fracture
i held it because someone had to—
she called me her favorite.
her sorrow arrived like a storm,
and i became the bowl she poured herself into.
young, i learned to steady a voice that wasn’t mine.
i believed it meant i was the one
who had to keep her whole.
i remember the year she shattered—
how the house tilted toward her grief,
how i moved through the rooms
collecting what she dropped—
confessions,
the small, bright pieces of a life
she couldn’t hold together.
i didn’t know then that i was learning a skill.
her breaking taught me the language—
the way a voice splits midsentence,
the way a house rearranges itself
around a wound.
i was young, parsing the fault lines,
learning damage’s fluency—
how every story has a seam
you feel before you see.
she spilled herself into me—
her fear, her wanting, her wild,
calling me the only one who understood.
i was young, too young to be the place
where someone else lived,
but she made a room inside me
and i kept it lit, believing that was love.
Placed on the lower right corner of vehicle’s window
In front of me in drive thru at Jimmy-John’s
Vehicle is all black, a VW SUV, tinted windows
Placard is bright white, big contrast to vehicle
Grabbed my attention, my thoughts
Wish it wasn’t necessary to be said
Wish we lived without its call
Wish we lived in harmony, ALL.
storm sewer stretches round & ribbed
underground, light caught in a smaller
ring down the length of this larger
one in which i fit, crouched, i
creep forward, echos of amphibians’
voices welcoming me into their own
temporary reprieve, algae
moist hollow, August heat overwhelming
pedestrians on the sidewalks but we
below whisper cool reassurances
that summer will not enter here to force
either one of us to have to choose a side
