I love nothing quite like I love your hands when you’ve just returned from drawing class, the pads of your thumbs smudged dark, charcoal dust settled in the lines of your knuckles, a few dark and careless storm clouds obscuring the otherwise sunny maps of your palms. There is mystery to these impermanent marking, these … Continue reading
“why have you gathered?” I yell, and the crows scream back as one, Harsh cries from above me, Dark birds are calling. They call some more– And more of their kind come, One missing black wingfeathers, He alights, and flies off into The dark of the coming night. The murder of crows Takes flight– Away … Continue reading
The world with its cause and effect is repeating itself like a large cat measuring the hours of its cage. The watermelons are back. The elephants use them as bowling balls on their way to the zoo. Their tails burn my fingers like cheap string. Trees crash behind them, then sink and blow away. Their … Continue reading
The sun has yet to rise, but the silver sky has extinguished the stars. Haleakalâ is black against the rising light. Maybe someone should say the mountain before dawn is darker than the mountain at midnight under starlight. It is. Last night, stars hovered at my fingertips. If there is fire, it is beyond me. … Continue reading
Cotton is my life, and T-shirts are the clothes the moment wears, soft stuff of familiar fabric worn into shape as we make lives from the material. A favorite may last years, but washing reveals what becomes of cloth. As the color fades, the fit fits better. Stitches loosen and seams relax, and the shape … Continue reading
Your blood has forgotten your name. It seeps though hidden channels towards the abyss. Ebbs out in heavy dark torrents. I don’t know your name. Not yet. Somewhere, a clerk, seeking your driver’s license, rifles through your bloody clothes. Meanwhile… Your blood drips onto the floor where I stand, and someone puts down a blanket … Continue reading
Give me the bleeding statues. His tall forehead is touched by a descending finger of light, his torso bulges the picture frame like an oak. He bears no smile lines or drooping nostrils or jowls of despair. But it was said that something jealous in the hollow of a … Continue reading
Running or thinking. Another phone booth disappears. Abridge between two ideas an empty room, the bed unmade. The room smaller than he remembered, half pink, stationary, the word bark on the dog’s mouth. Headlights circling in the sky. They woke him up. Time to go. Down to the station. The hospital. Bail him out. Run … Continue reading
It’s finally possible to microwave the perfect egg. I take a shallow bowl with Mandarin carp hand-painted on the bottom, puncture the yolk, before my daughters wake, before the peace of night is gone. I grate pecorino to Eine Kleine Nachtmusik; Oolong tea in raku, on teak beneath a spray of roses. The crossword in … Continue reading
tea’s a brewin’ blow the dust out of the mug and don’t be so coy this time lay down and get what you came for storm’s a comin’ gather your sheets from the line but don’t make the bed this time let it lie open like a sore Continue reading
Coe Review 