mapping the nest
Photo by Federico Bottos via Unsplash : The Photograph : It doesn’t matter what we should have argued about. Talking was something we couldn’t or wouldn’t do. We walked through a meadow instead, you slightly ahead and I taking pictures of things I wanted to remember, including that bloody sunset. The flowers parted before... Continue Reading →
Photo by Harry Quan via Unsplash : Alter Ego : I didn’t know what she was: that brittle, reed-like, human-like riddle. A paper whisper. A burn. She made an ark for a language the color of loneliness. Words rushed to her. So did the clouds. It was hard to watch her drown in... Continue Reading →
Photo by Denys Argyriou via Unsplash : This bruised shadow of a promise : This bruised shadow . of a promise. I made it. It was meant . ... Continue Reading →
Photo by Tertia van Rensburg via Unsplash : The Snare : A mind like a ring Sliding shut on some quick thing. ~ Sylvia Plath, “The Rabbit-Catcher” Had it been you, all along. Had it been you. Or my fear of telling the truth. Of telling the fear. How do I know. ... Continue Reading →
Photo by v2osk via Unsplash : Falling Asleep with Carpenter Bees : The walls are thin, transparent. Angels stand at right angles. I close my eyes to see the bees breaking and entering. Honeycomb dipped in sorrow. Eyeballs rolling like grapes on my palm. I see a handful of pennies fallen through the grate. Shallow... Continue Reading →
Leonora Carrington Self-Portrait: The Inn of the Dawn Horse : Family Lore : 1. Wrath During lightning storms, my father rows out to sea. The villagers hide behind closed shutters, while the man they once hated lures the thunderclouds away from the shore. From the hill tower, my siblings and I watch the fireworks:... Continue Reading →
Vincent Van Gogh Enclosed Field in the Rain : Conversation : It’s frivolous, this rain, with its …………unreasonable claims ……………………on our silence. You stalk the hallway, I crush …………tears in my fist. ……………………I’ve taken to rearranging books on the shelf, first …………alphabetically, ……………………then by the year of a writer’s …………death. ……………………Orphan books. I seem …………to love... Continue Reading →
Photo by Tersius van Rhyn via Unsplash : : Four Nightmares : It choked her path in the first one, tall as a wall, wide as the sea at night. It spewed darkness, waves of it clogging the shore of her sleep. She was somewhere near it, but couldn’t see herself. Beyond, was the world... Continue Reading →
Image courtesy of Alien Covenant : Fine, Then : No one wants to touch the skin of this poem, its unhatched enigma. The words sit in rows like alien pods, oozing deceit. Truth is rarely the destination to begin with, but it helps to know where you’re going. Or so I’ve been told. Perhaps there’s... Continue Reading →
Photo by Anton Scherbakov via Unsplash : : Spring Inspection : She lies on the couch, legs crossed, eyes staring into the ceiling. A day comes when she’ll have to do something: go out and shuffle through the snow, fall on the ground, stand up and run, smell the bushes for a sign of spring or dog... Continue Reading →
Photo by Jo Wroten via Unsplash : : alteration : don’t look at my fingers : bluish ... Continue Reading →
Photo by Neslihan Gunaydin via Unsplash : The Rose : This hand that holds the trowel, a rubber glove to hide thick-knuckled, restless fingers— you know it’s yours. Yours, also, the knobby knees, the narrow feet in muddy crocs, the loosened skin holding it all together—who knows however long? You are a waterfall of flesh and... Continue Reading →
Gian Lorenzo Bernini The Ecstasy of St. Theresa, detail :: Why I Like Hot Showers : Forgive me, for I have sinned. It’s been more than a day since my last confession. I am engulfed and ablaze, arms outstretched to embrace this liquid fire, my face thrown upward in rapture, serene as St.... Continue Reading →
Photo by Christin Hume via Unsplash : Salt Marsh : Someday she will start writing, leaving her fear behind— a coat on the doorstep. Words, rusty in their hinges, will blow against the old barn, will whistle in the thin rain. She’ll hear a door close with a bang, a dog howl at... Continue Reading →
Félix Vallotton La Valse : Death As a New Language : You learn to speak it sooner or later. Sooner or later you succumb to its charm, ready to waltz as it leads you across dimly lit floors. Slender flutes of champagne flash their similes from darkened mirrors. People are gathered by the walls,... Continue Reading →
Photo by Hilthart Pedersen via Unsplash : Compromise : A flask empty of wine on the table. The table wanting for food in a house missing its people. Things are meant to be filled with other things. The sky, empty of birds, has clouds, at least. They carry no rain. Far below, the earth... Continue Reading →
Photo by Taylor Ann Wright via Unsplash : Count Your Blessings : Sneer, counting the moments touched by joy, the ones currently marching like mad across your front lawn. You clearly see them for what they are—frauds, counterfeit, foolish impostors, because, let’s be real, no way in hell do you deserve what brushed by with... Continue Reading →
Photo by Gaelle Marcel via Unsplash :: Amnesia : 1. We’re alone on the brink of this tabletop. ............We rub air between our palms, sweat ............between our bellies. ........................Our voices drop like ripe fruit. In the span of an evening, we lose two former ideas and a half- acquaintance. You dine on fragments of scrolls... Continue Reading →
St. John the Theologian : : The Icon : We crouched in the dirt behind the empty church and watered dry lumpy clods with our piss. We laughed at the yellow jets running between our feet, twin rivulets rushing to meet and flood a colony of ants. Disaster, perhaps, on a miniature scale, but not... Continue Reading →
Photo by Bruno Nascimento via Unsplash : Time Capsule We dug a hole at the back of grandma’s garden, where we had laid bodies to rest in matchstick boxes, each grave with its makeshift cross of twigs and brambles, as if beetles, too, had a god, or a church, or a soul. It was the pull of... Continue Reading →
Image courtesy of incandescenttarrot.com : The Fool : The fool pauses on the precipice of a word. He surveys the great blue. It’s cloudy today. Perhaps tomorrow he’ll write a poem about flying. Today must be rooted in dirt. Step after step after step, the fool descends. It’s been eons since he left the summit.... Continue Reading →
Image courtesy of the historical archive AGERPRESS : Bread : My father stands with his back to the wall, clutching his fists. The boys are tall. They lower their shaved heads. Show us your hands, they say. If you're not hiding anything. My father knows he'll cry soon. He calls grandma, but she can't hear... Continue Reading →
Photo by Fabrizio Conti via Unsplash Rites of Passage : I The rock was thrown as a joke, a sleight of hand. Then, the bursting eye, the entrails- like stuff pouring out. I knew it was an eye, but it looked like an unhatched egg, the embryo throbbing with its own hunger for life. It... Continue Reading →
Photo by Tom Barett via Unsplash : Room with a View : All I can see out the window is your absence trimming the landscape. : First published in One Sentence Poems, September 2018
Photo by Martino Pietropoli via Unsplash : The Guest : My house grows small waiting for her to leave. Today I opened the door to the cellar and it wasn’t there. I climbed the staircase to the attic— it ended in a dead wall. The bathroom I’ve been so proud of shrank to the size... Continue Reading →
Photo by Janco Ferlich via Unsplash : Body Not Hers : For my children, when they grow up 1. The darkness within me, it’s all- engulfing, viscous, and real, the mystery of its black rose still blooming. Dark objects fall in and out like planets. Mars glides by glowing red, a fascinating eye into hell.... Continue Reading →
Photo by Fabrice Villard via Unsplash : Winter : A woman writes a line in the snow and leaves. Nothing else is new in that quiet field. Large snowflakes seal in her words, an envelope, closing. Next summer, she won't remember what she has written, or why. In the wake of retreating steps, silence keeps the... Continue Reading →
