Report Card I never knew what hit me when I died that morning – I fell, between leaf and blade while I was swinging on a rotten rope from...

Flotsam, Jetsam We are an equation. You subtract, I add back in not just your name, my name, but every word we ever said – each glance,...

Street magic I don't believe in magic. But something hovers along these streets, something like dust not settling hangs just above the...

Hagiography v2 What is a saint? A terracotta shard a biscuit-fired embryo an upside-down amphora waft of buckwheat honey from an unsealed...

Lintel years twist through its grain an acorn ripened radicle unfurled sapwood dried to heartwood the beam dark with soot and softened by...

The Leak The cistern is leaking – through the boards the water flows, a tacky rusted water percolated through dust and wood and iron....

When Huitaca Dances Today, in my chair, I dream again of reaching a hall of sweat and Latin beats. I am tense, a pent-up hum, a Colombian...

A Leaving The swifts have left, for homes where seasons blend together; ink on wet paper. Crispness flushes the faltering grass,...

Padraig – Who Drove the Snakes Out of Ireland At the allotment, daddy forked the crumbly black earth till the air quaked with...

pale silver of dusk I wanted to rent out my room and move faraway to the beach to bartend and wear only a little clothing an old...

The plumb line Father, I lift your thinning thighs, nudge down your trousers, peel off your socks, edge on your night vest, rub your...

Happy Place We would live by a clean sea and our house would be calm, not threatened by tides claiming more and more land as waters rise....

Last Wishes From the white void hiding the sea, familiar foghorns roll. Why are they so worried? There's no better way to be buried. When...

Few Days Late I keep it to myself and Loretta. Her father beats her in places hidden to the naked eye, but I see when she strips down to...

Photograph by Denise Setterington Obituary Column the dodo. history. romanticism. the petrol engine. cinema. print journalism. the white...

Poem Composed while doing a Headstand The fir cone I picked from a Corsican forest, carried across an ocean nestled between balls of...

A study of walnuts Tight-fisted baby hands something in them I want or an ear that doesn't listen shrunk from a man known long ago or a...

Nativity, 2020 Even a barn makes room for the fresh crop. Even the cattle have drawn down their stores. The mangold holds out nothing for...

nine ladies dancing without music. without shoes. hungry as sharpened wolves. their love a porous wealth, it flows through the skin in...

Christmas Day 1952 A bird down in the snow: black/white, this on a walk by Pyrtle Spring, spindrift off the new fall and to my mother:...

Calvus's Saturnalia Prank (Catullus Poem 14, translated by Josephine Balmer) If I didn't love you, sweet teasing Calvus, far more than my...

Special The Baby Jesus took up bowling, rolled my life through twenty one seasons until I landed here, Daddy, outside your office door,...

Birthday Tonight, like last year, we fish out the birthday tankards, and my mind goes back to that night beside the lake, when the spring...

Anniversary How cold the gown is, after years of camphor, moonshine tangled in the sleeves, the bodice brittle, like the ghost of...