Summer Days
Summer afternoon in
A dark living room
You on the couch eyes
Half closed after mowing
The lawn, but still open
Enough that we knew
Not to turn the channel from
The dusty old WGN “shit kicker”
That had held his imagination since
He was young
He said the slow drawl and the
High plains clouds driving towards
The horizon forever was all a man
Needed to [...]
A gentle cool rain blew in and
Was heard only by me, and only
because of the loudmouthed leaves,
tiny fingers on keyboards typing, the screen
the dim edge of my skull, through
a crack the mosquito slipped and
then found its terrible beak into
my veins while I tried to sleep—
Slapping shoulder, slapping thigh
buzzing ear buzzing by,
I held vigil over the [...]
Sound: ice cubes in a glass
Color: deepest purple
Smell: ocean
Sensation: being watched
Place: tree house
The sun by the ocean, set.
from their lofty treehouse
where as children they were married
and where as children they nursed
false wounds bandaged with
newspaper and crepe
and drank sidecar’s from invisible
cups with ice cubes clinking–
in this treehouse they
sat, the deepest purple
seeping through the cracks
in the boards [...]
Yes, it is year two that I am going to submit some poetry to the Sidewalk Poetry project!
This is a great public art project started by artist Marcus Young, where anybody who resides in St. Paul can submit a poem. If chosen, the poem(s) will be pressed into the wet cement in various neighborhoods around [...]
The seed leaves the sharpie colored ready ripe avocado with the sound of mud Sucking your boot and you are made dizzy with anticipation.
Avocado. never could spell that word. love to eat it, hate to spell it.
Same with recipe and the names of Polish friends–with an “I, or a “Y”?
Too many versions echo from the [...]
Moving In, Moving Out
new shower curtain from Walgreen’s, all folded and reeking of vinyl like the new zipper pouch you got to hold your colored pencils and square eraser in the 4th grade, the smell
Better than new car, superglue, sharpies or leather—hands down enough to give you a headache to the split of your skull, [...]
Down a small side street you
Took me to a place
You claimed never to be open
The hundreds of times you walked
By, the lights off, door locked,
Thinking of me each time
Not a place, exactly, but a bookstore
That carries only poetry
And for one day only,
The lights were on inside.
Fingertips of rain
Came down on our shoulders
That later would become [...]
Doing Adult Things
Like picking people up in bars
Like getting melanoma removed
Like going to rehab
Like getting prescription ointment
Like diving for your phone
Because you are
Expecting an important call
& dismissing it
With a toss of your
Hangover wet hair
When you see it’s
Just your boyfriend.
Like adultery.
Like flat tires.
Like overdrawn checkbooks,
Like needing to change your locks,
Like radiation sickness,
Like stones that wedge themselves
In [...]
Sound: child’s breath
Color: orange
Smell: rain
Sensation: joy
Place: parade
——————————-
before the curious sun
slips over the treetops,
over your neighbors roof.
before it turns into that
burning orange that hangs
high in the sky, making
parents shield their
children’s delicate
faces that are already
covered with butterflies
and sunscreen,
before they turn
their delicate faces
from the plodding loud parade
and all it’s bright colors
and exaggerations,
still afraid of missing
a clown or puppy [...]
Sorry this took so long. It isn’t easy for me to write for children. I tend to scare them. The first version of this might have given him nightmares!
For Thomas:
It was warm, it was spring,
You looked out from your bed,
What was that thing?
Over there, in the corner,
Behind the gently turning fan?
It wasn’t dirt, no, and
It [...]