(after the nursery rhyme) Born on Monday The midwife, watching for signs in the stars, declares the time has come; it cannot be otherwise. Neighbor folk fill the room with flowers, and when at last the water breaks they jerk the drunken father awake and send him to buy blessings from the priest. … Continue reading
I. The middle-aged Russian, bare-and-barrel-chested, asleep in the bed next to me in a hostel in Lisbon screams at midnight about his lost passport clutched in his hand like a Bible. II. 4 AM. 2nd date. 2 long-empty wine bottles stand like rooks on the table guarding nothing but trepidation. You in pajamas, tired in … Continue reading
I. A first kiss, on a fouton smudged blue by broken pens. A night I’ve craved for fortnights is lengthened by carbon dioxide held against its will, only to moisten foreign lips. During Ravel’s left-handed concerto I hold her hand meditatively, mindfully aware, and each pulse brokers torrents of a resolution, of the distant ticks … Continue reading
is what you notice first, a fleet of wheelchairs adrift below the waist of the horizon, lost ships in a sea of dementia, the grey-tiled ceiling pressing down, down like pea soup fog, zero visibility in a lost world. They are the derelicts washed up on unfamiliar shores, sea and storm-battered hull slats, once sea-worthy, … Continue reading
Nothing more could be done, so on a bright desert morning they came. Your home, existential oasis, where you intended to stay to the very last, the trailer with its “gate to nowhere”, plunked amid the saguaro, prickly pear and tumbleweed, where never again would you lay your head under star-studded nights. Where feral cats … Continue reading
Divided and divided again, already old, the root cellar held in the winds names, memorials upon memorials like so many afterbirths safeguarded in cellared mason jars I could not believe in the names on the stones: in memory of, beloved, dear, blessed, yes, any more than I could believe in my … Continue reading
Just look at these freaks they’re nowhere and everywhere half in love with their great hunger and stuffing themselves with succulent meals of soft white food but what do they care they don’t care about towers of silence the great perishing trees how even on the clearest days something is always blurring the sky why … Continue reading
‘I’ll come and foreclose, get your car and your clothes, Singin’ I’m jolly banker am I.’ –Woody Guthrie The odds are long, the threat is huge, And dark clouds litter the horizon While yesterday’s red meat turns bad. The smiling Shell Answer Man Is nowhere to be found, my friend, And lonely Mister Clean, singing … Continue reading
other people feel this too other people feel this mess this time this place the crush of the anvil chest comic comedic comedian on the stage of your forehead anchored by eyebrows walking within worry lines of a worry wart sorry I digress … Continue reading
Pterodactyl shoulders slumped. Patches ripped from my uniform. Sewn patches, not low class iron-ons, no sir, those patches were real for a while, until I went to prison for something I didn’t do; that’s when they sealed all my patches inside a manila envelope, my name in permanent marker across tin clips splayed like road … Continue reading
Coe Review 