Real Good Poems

How hard should a reader have to work to get something out of a poem?Would digging a hole to China … More

How Is It with You?

Sometimes it’s a straight line,the closest distance between two points.But it’s not necessarily a flat line.For some, yes, that’s true, … More

Our Father

Arthur, our dad, told us all about who knew what and who to know. He was a big wheel in … More

Driver-less Cars

I sit behind you at the stoplight, and I know you. The light turns green, but your head bows toward … More

The House of Missing Keys, Part 17

David Chan always sat in the back of the classroom.  This wasn’t an indication of his lack of interest in his … More

Cliché, Not a Cliché?

I don’t think I’ve ever said to someone that something I’ve heard has been refreshing.I’m not sure I know what … More

Good Talk

Why curse? Would you pluck out your tongue,hang it on the wall as a hook for your black umbrella, onebattered … More

The Secret Keeper

Fortunate the mother who lives the unflawed life of lore, perfect, a smooth vase, snow white, the finest ashes left, … More

The Palm-Reading Time

I see me catch the glass bowl admire my juggling as I stoop down I go in slow motion watch … More

It Felt So Good

That Sony radio’s cheap black leather strapjust barely tied the music to my wrist.So poorly made I feared it just … More

Some Peace

We meet our elderly guide in the late afternoon,the graying skies adding to the somber atmosphereoverlaying the double-named London/Derry landscape. … More

How To Screw

In my younger days, it was so easy, so straightforward.Really, in my house there was only one way to do … More

Mind in the Time

Remember that, she says, as we sit sipping coffee, I was all whipped-cream nosed. It has been 40 years since … More

Growing Soft

Sorry to say, but several things about you bother me.For one, you are cleverly invisible most times.I hear your soft … More

Add the Garden

For a long time you have cultured all these seeds,sprouted them like Mother Nature puttering herself,transferred them gently from little, … More

Volcano

It was too good to be true, finally, my plan to retire on the Big Island.At 30 I settled on … More

Time’s Gift

It’s that late hourBeer in handThe yard work done againI watch the close of the faded irisPurple and whiteNot as … More

Happy Some Before Dawn

Quieter, still quieter, quiet down the energy pent up today, for such recklessness cannot sit wasting by the window ledge … More

Each Journey a First

The idea is knowing I can go somewhere, and I amcreating the first pattern of steps no one has ever … More

On Leaving

As porous as air, sliced Thin, I fall between See you way over there perhaps, or Not, maybe hear your … More