Each year at Christmas from 1962 -71,
I’d walk the 2 miles
To the downtown stores,
With $60 in my wallet, which dad
Had given to me
To get some presents for mom.
For that amount in those days,
I’d hunt  store racks and shelves
Umtil I found  for her –

– a girdle                                         a bra
a blouse  for her job                     a nightgown                    

2 pairs nylon  stockings

It would take
   All of one Saturday afternoon
Until
I found the nicest
For the best prices.
The gifts were
The same every year.
As I recall that decade
Of Christmas mornings,
Mom was always glad to
For her new gifts
of the same old things… 

once you’ve heard one gunshot
why not another?
The way the snow looked
under that floodlight—
I did not love it
or you
in that harshness,
in that cold.
I missed the blood 
and the warmth of it. 
once you’ve held the gun
why not shoot?
All you need to do after
is live

Maybe I’m so tired all the damn time because of how many times a day someone second guesses me. Go ahead, google it, I’ll wait. Better yet, you all stand here, take your time mulling it over. “That can’t be right?” I am, but we’re good. I’ll walk home, take a nap, stretch my limbs. I’ll leave y’all to it.

calluses soften
pain floods back
against steel string
yet my hands
ache to remember

I balance on the sides of my deformed fifth metatarsals,
creeping for the exit door. The bones of my feet
smashed gradually, but that part was painless, 
weightless. I was numb long before, waning in stages,
testing new ways to hurt. Right now it is the double
head hovering behind mine, swallowing kitchens
with her sharp, baking soda white teeth. Right now
it is my nails and inner arms radiating a vivid blue,
dehydrated veins blown out from the labwork,
ice sedimenting inside, samples hemolyzed
through downsized needles probing translucent flesh.
I wait as steroids dissolve keloids, the black cuts simmer.
The results come slow. I dose myself with agonizing clarity.

I’m an indoor person. 
Give me my air conditioning. 
I sweat if it’s over seventy degrees.
I don’t ever tan, I only burn.
Mosquitos find me delicious. 
Don’t ever ask me to go camping, 
Even glamping is too much. 

Today was enough to lure me outside,
in a chair in my driveway, evening falling.

When the fireflies started
their strobing mating dance,
and the light faded to a sliver of pink,
I came inside. 

I escaped with only two mosquito bites,
so I might go out again tomorrow. 
But this time I’ll wear bug spray.

                                   for Janice Roberts

fully opened magnolia blossoms
grace the altar this day
a light zest of lemon
draws you into its full beauty
the best is when you’re up close
like to the very heart of God.

leatherbond notebook, my first perception check.

Anxiously crafting, surfing websites,

Message boards on how to balance; not wreck.

One night a month to really get it right

I scribble some notes, review last encounter.

Collect grey minis, paintbrush realm forgotten

Refreshments:Ale8, Athletic, bourbon anything but water

Park, test carrying weight from the car

Setup, papers, bright screens woodland scenes

Brown light filters through a garage bar

Spotify playlist allows musical dream

practiced voice, stole a podcast few

Roll, move, battle, reveal, critical fail

Jobe appears, laughter ensues

Pizza is scoffed, slapped backs, continued tale. 

When your yearning creates such strife

Sacrifices made, low initiatives small goodbyes

Sometimes it good to give a new try

Making the world a better place, at least in this life

A blood-red moon
hangs low in the sky,
too late to be a harbinger,
because our doom is already here.

It’s a strawberry moon,
they say.
For the early harvest,
they tell me.

But this country will harvest
what it wants,
and how,
and when it pleases,
I think.
The moon has no say.

Do we?

Tell her what you think of her,
this country bathed in blood.

Pen to page is fine —
good, even, 
or at the very least historical,
if not cliche —
for conversing with a blood-red moon.

But some things are mightier than the pen.
And maybe we should be doing those instead.

It came and it went. The floodwater, I mean, and it left even faster than it arrived, flushing out the newly built beaver dams at either end of a 200’ long culvert,
but by then, much damage had been done.

What happened is, this beaver colony moved to a section of land
sandwiched between the older houses of the county and
the newly constructed ones on the edge of town.

And though I had hoped the flood would not happen,
I knew that it possibly could, and to save me trouble later,
since neither the city nor county would, I had been liquidating for two whole months.
 
I bought heavy-duty plastic shelves for setting the things higher;
also two dozen big tubs and packed heavier things on the bottom,
in hopes these would stay upright and float. (They did.)

But as far as I know, nothing yet has been done about the problem,
though many houses were flooded,
and my son complained loudly to whomever.

Meanwhile, my big, thick, beautiful rug had to lay on a stone patio to drain,
because three grown men couldn’t drag it away any further.
Later, I moved it by wagon then, by God’s grace, coaxed it onto the trampoline,
where it got three days of drenching rain, then three days of a blistering sun.

Now it’s dry, rolled up and tied, and is, finally, back inside, waiting to find a new home, because I think those flushed-out beavers will remember
where it was they were having fun before they were washed away,
and will be back.

I hate to joke, but I might as well.
If this beaver colony grows any faster,
might they be offered their own zip code some day?