While daddy had a strong

      work-outside-the-home ethic

      sometimes two jobs

it was our stay-at-home-mom’s commitment

     I was most inspired by

     her raising seven kids   

     supper at five.

That summer in the late 80s

     maybe it was the need for more money

she got a job as city secretary

     in a small west Texas town, population 300.

When we went to the family reunion

& walked to the one-block downtown

into a small office

she sat at her desk

attentive

hands folded on top. 

Mom!  What are you doing?

She quit the next week.

No one likes to think they may be enjoying
their last knockwurst.

But you reach an age where such thoughts
slip past the polka band,
step out on the dance floor
and do the chicken dance.

Of course, life being the trickster
that it is, anything might be a last.
Last trip down I-65.
Last time drinking a cold Pilsner.
Last time wearing lederhosen.

Our time at the festival of the living
is brief.

So, savor the moment:
make it two hotdogs,
with relish.

What could be more surreal
than Salvador visiting
a baroque Roman church?  

But this Christ of Saint John of the Cross
stands amid frescoes and sculpture spanning
centuries. An act of artistic faith,
this modern Christ in a drone’s-eye-view
over Calvary, a fishing boat below—
is a gift of contradictions,
fruit of a saint’s fiery dark nights
and an artist’s restless search for God.  

No coincidence, nearby is a cross
said to be miraculous, saved from fire
that consumed this church,
said to cure a Roman plague,
brought by a pope in COVID
to St. Peter’s for his lone walk to pray
in silence for healing in another
time of plague.  

And would Dalí smile to see close by
the tomb of Cardinal Giovanni Michiel,
who died of poisoning,
whose cook was put to death by the pope?
But rumors still persist,
it was the Borgias.  

I rest my camera and try to fathom
faith, real and surreal,
that hung
and hangs
before us.

the secret shift
          of letters-

     your fingers
  monkey mark

    about a bird 
           you saw.

Two squirrels playing
tag atop a fence skitter
an inch from my face
as I round the blind corner.
We all reel back in surprise.

One panicked instant,
hearts hammering collective
fright, before we all
recover southern manners,
scoot politely to the side.

He stopped wearing his
One day, I stopped wearing mine
He didn’t notice

beneath our weathered wooden floorboard lays

a rotted plum

a pitted, gutted, worm home

akin to a flushed and plucked corpse

i hoped for tenderness

no skin to peel, only warmth hung loose, falling off the bone

i didn’t wish for it

but your blood dripped juicy from the corners of my mouth

 i fear i wasted it.

i drifted south to our clawfoot tub

but i couldn’t bring myself to bathe

instead i knelt at its feet

and readied my skin for staining

brandished by your soft fictitious pulse

a reminder that i’ve sat in gray for far too long

swell and red and smeared orange

“If my engine works perfect on empty/ I guess I’ll drive.”
~Noah Kahan, Growing Sideways

When first we are set in motion, 
we are taught to mind the lines,
to aim our feet, crayon, bowling ball, bike, or car
straight ahead, find our balance,
focus on a single point on the horizon.

We lean on hands to steady our wobbly body,
avoid outlines, gutter rails, training wheels, lane lines
those boundaries that were placed
to keep us safely contained.

Singers internalize the melody
before we trill a run or meld a harmony,
the lyric preceeds the scat,
notes composed before those improvised.

And now we are expected
to just live out here
with a beating heart in a body
and a brain of our own
we don’t always know how to nourish,
responding to its experiences?

Who thought it was safe
to hand over the keys to us,
unattended by wiser elders,
with nothing made of steel
to keep us from sailing off a cliff
on a sharp turn we never saw coming?

I could pretend nothing mattered while I beamed at my daughter 
in her pink, steampunk glasses and oversized white shirt with an outrageous
floppy collar—that nothing bothered me, but my son was staring
bullets into my suddenly lucky face—presumably because I wasn’t admiring
him, and the heart of the boy seized behind brown eyes.

Tonight, the cascade of hair he’d grown flopped to protect
from intruders, and he felt the controls on the Nintendo Switch take
a road through Capri at top speeds, anything but be here now—a warm bottle
of Perrier at hand as usual, a strange compliment.

Tonight, her device clacked
under wisps of thumb, occasional taps of finger—she
learned the WiFi for Heine Brothers Coffee easily enough to linger
with friends never seen, never spoken with directly, nor correctly guessed
whether they were a suitable remedy for 

the strange absence I left, the freakish caves
dotting the landscape under their suburban home,
and those dinners of cereal and milk in piled up bowls and boxes in her room.

His frappuccino heartache and stuff.
The sun setting boring again.  
Some band, a lame IPA, and more BBQ shit. 
You confess to forgetting what pleasure means. 

The sun setting on Starbucks.
Neighborhood shopping in a neighborhood
where it’s cool to live, which means most people
live in some editorial of deleted space.

Not being able to afford anything 
in 20 or 30 different photos. 
The price of a single jalapeno. 
Another apartment. A huge crane.   

Suburbia is misery’s head
ache. Dinner with the parents.   
He cries Titos in the driveway.  
It never rains.

You win the + lottery with a pregnancy test 
and move, happily, to Toledo.