From the time I placed a plastic infant in a stroller, I knew my name   wasn’t really mine. In school, I scrawled Steep, angled letters between faint blue rules, but like that broken center line,   the one stitched through the heart of the letters’ hoops and loops and crosses,   I knew my … Continue reading →

Kitchen lights glow from the back of a farmhouse as a flashlight rambles across a freshly plowed field, pulling behind it a man, tired and hungry,  heading in for the night. Continue reading →

Missing sign of unnamed street un-located transient free to erase itself from the map   Phony architecture  of unoccupied mall plaster peeling off  candy-colored walls fading like nylon underwear  forgotten on clotheslines   This is where I like hiding my step mesmerized  by crevices thin fault-lines  where reality slips  below surface   Beach resort in … Continue reading →

the first indication of his fixation: excessive picnicking. summer afternoons wasted amidst the pines and palmettos, far from the bustle of the city. profound admiration for the countrified agrarian masses. Odes to milking-pails and balls of cowslips soon ensued.   from dewy morn to the dream-filled eve to the page he committed pastoral verse for … Continue reading →

Summer walk, 6 a.m. Still dark,                  he pulls on the sleeveless top —                                 white, brand name: Chico’s.    Clouds buoy a waning moon —               … Continue reading →

To the woman nursing a liter bottle–half Diet Coke, half grenadine– on the curb outside the liquor store,   It seemed a sweet and fitting poison; the same seductive sugar pill disguising acid after-bite. She had heard a can of Cola could strip a car engine so it seemed more ritualistic cleaning, less stomach pump … Continue reading →

Todas las lineas abren. All lines open. Returning, a coup of hands make moves to undress the orange tree nails laying tracks in our flesh and cutting upwards like unexpected shears— deeper. Sheathed in metal, the city has plunged into our jugular whistling through pulp and syrup [“Please—]          Exit      … Continue reading →

The year when I sold the property I thought  I’d let the wisteria grow wild. I would let her take her revenge  after so many years.   I recalled when she was cut. A stump a maimed nothing after having shaded so abundantly  the veranda outside the main bedroom having made luscious love  to pinkish … Continue reading →

The sky today is a procession of spider silk and lace. The sun laughs over leaf and sparkling stone underfoot. The wind gathers, roaring and spinning and plucking up leaves, and I cry savagely within, “Take me, too! Let me fly!” My heart lifts, for an instant I am swept up to float, like a … Continue reading →