尚も (Naomo) * * *
 * * * Japanese (adv.): yet even now

I love it when her quiet hands tend the broth.
I drop in beans, 
and Ryuichi invites her with the sake wine
warm, fruity, sweet—
a katana for my head.
—and birds flown drop seed for forest green kyūri, 
our cucumbers bobbing in the bubbling donabe pot 
for our nabemono, a group-soup swimming 
with beef, noodle, and cabbage.
He has eyes for her.
I am still with her silence, it is moonlit

where each player-flavor in the pot will savor—
distinct, planted, sitting as planets 
in free fall, orbiting the sun where 
her mouth rests
surrounded by silky towels at center.
We roll out wide, swoop closely 
as herons scooping fish.
She falls through space, we follow.

Bad Luck And Lousy Scripts
-After a line from Killing Moon by Jo Nesbo  

Of all the Tiki Bars I’ve inhabited, this is the most adored. 
Under the thatch of the lanai, my heart, 
blasted in the storm of summer’s children,
chewing on choral pedestals where sea creatures
 sun themselves in the cove.

I drank rum from a coconut through a hole bored into it,
sucking out every last bit of pulp blended with pineapple
until silky smooth and deadly.  

And I took a hand in mine
and I said something like
    – Yes –

And he said something like  
    – Yes –

And we hummed a song
    – Together – 

and the most frequently asked question in town
answered with bad luck and lousy scripts
all written at the drag show on the strip
after a couple of doubles down
and a beer goggle babe who left you hanging
and empty in the back seat of your own sedan.

                                                                          after Shaun Turner

draw a Lithium bath
hot as you can stand it
stream a brain-easy show
fill a fresh bowl with popcorn

make a plan
a list
an omelet
a poem

wash the moss off the patio rug 
let it cure and stiffen
on the driveway pavement
all the infernal afternoon

read just the headlines
watch news with no sound
spanish subtitles might
read more gracefully

shift the balance of the laundry load
for the fifth time, drape yourself across
the washer to see if you can coax it
through the spin cycle to the buzzer

or throw it out the window
to smother the dumpster fire
spit-roasting the world 
while fascists make s’mores

You’re in the car that you’ve limped along
since the days of your high school years
that are further in the distance
every time you look.

In the passenger seat is a girl
who has been there a while,
now more of a woman
who you can’t quite equate
with the kid who stood alongside you
on stages and in classrooms
in tiny, nowhere towns
through what you thought
were your biggest, everything years.

Fields of nothing roll by
as midwest cities–
each one a carbon copy
of the one before–
fade to dust in the
rearview.

You swap stories about how
you each lost faith in 
your religion but maybe not 
your belief in a God,
under the shadow of billboards
declaring that
HELL IS REAL
and
JESUS SAVES.

She tells you how she knows
that no matter how far she strays,
she ultimately plans
to return home.
You say the opposite,
claiming with false bravado
that you can’t get far enough.

Secretly you know
that the odds are you
will end up back home too,
(you don’t know if 
should be resentful
or comforted
by that fact)
either by choice
or by failure.
(You think they might
mean the same thing)

Everything you know is behind you;
everything you think you know is ahead of you.
Every time you leave one and come back to the other
it seems like you know it a little less.

“Home” is no longer distinct,
falling somewhere between
the one you were given
and the one you’ve made:
what’s behind
and what’s ahead.
The girl who has always been beside you
has grown up
and you’re not quite sure if 
you have too.
Every town is dying:
mere rest stops on the road 
to being forgotten.
Everything you try to leave behind
haunts the side of the road
and the inside of your soul.
Everything you try to hold onto
manages to leave or get left 
in one of those nowhere towns.

HELL IS REAL,
the billboards remind you,
in case you try to forget.

But the road still stretches
ahead of you.
There’s only one direction to go.

You don’t know where it’s taking you.
You’re not there
yet.

(June 20-25, Bob out of Indiana)
    
    Cruise up, for 4th of July,    Commenwealth’s border
    Line on driver’s side (mine),  Broadway, just over the
    Ohio from home, my coworker,        an anachronistic 
    South Roy Wilkins Avenue (9th),     64 Jetstar facing,
    End of the Summer shutdown,                  toward  the

  Entrance to Cave Hill, sunny day, I     happen to notice
  No bridges between buildings, just slipstreams alight.
  Consider                                                                         my
  Options .        .       .     .                                .     .       .        .
  Unfortunately, the dozen (+/-30) ships          scattered.
  Never had sense to check Barry Jr’s    Courier-Journal
  Then, nor spoke to  i nterrup t  my                 golf buddy
  Enjoying his gas station Coke, point out  how the river
  Reflected their glow. Still, I had sight     & I was glad to
  See it–grateful–I still          dream                 in full color.

go buy a lime. The
young girl at the cash regis-
ter gave it to us.               

*an erasure of “Quinceañera,” by Jess Roat, Lexington Poetry Month (06/22/25)                                                                

There are three of you,
two scratching at their desks
one standing far down the hall.

That is all,
no interaction
no recognition

And the file cabinets are closed

A time when rotary dials
reined (and rang), no texts

with gifs could tantalize you
to turn your attention away
from the job of the day.

There aren’t even snapshots
in frames on your desks –  

strictly business, strictly BS.

So, it seems
so old,
so cold,

so closed in the Kodak margins,
you are alone.

Tide rolls in and brings
The bite of the cold sea and
Sand to itch my toes.

Tide rolls out and takes
Balance from tumbling creatures
But not itchy sand.