Poems
Mosquito Trap
We sway on iron chairs, a little tipsy
round a glass table streaked with weather
everyone drinks, it could be mid-summer
with demi-glaces, dark rum and sour
warm and humid, the bricked patio
grows moss, always feels like rain
we sway on iron chairs, a little tipsy
sip from tin tumblers, no one enjoys this
way into night more than my grandfather
in his white Panama hat, seersucker suit
half-listening, peering through tinted glasses
at our lit trap, perched like a hungry gull
we sway on iron chairs, a little tipsy
a zap, shock, into its blue fluorescence
then another…makes us happy
despite the truck cruising the neighborhood
pumping gas into the air—can’t kill
this evening, my old man smokes, who cares
we sway on iron chairs, a little tipsy
as a cockroach the size of a fist gets hit.
-"Mosquito" appeared in Antioch Review
Drifting Off, East North East
I’m the one
inside the crowded bistro
reading alone
with an untouched martini
a young woman in floral dress
pedals by
a boy sits cross-legged
at the trolley stop fumbling papers
why close the sculpture garden at night…
shadows play best in lunar light
out my window, people sip
gossip, and form a standing patio
no one notices me listen
too much perhaps with myself
like a cheap shot
of tequila after many rounds with friends
it’s been a decade
since I first sat alone
through a matinee
while sunshine cooked my car seat—
a stinging my thighs
have not forgotten.
-"Drifting Off East, North East," appeared in The Southern Poetry Anthology
Home for Thanksgiving
And from the visions of veins like arteries, and from months of plying
Between can and can, vacant as a pint in the morning…
—W.S. Merwin
The city buttoned like a woman
sealed by her favorite angora coat
even silence could not escape humidity
in the moment it takes the wine
glass to find the floor— I am not here
for the creased linen suits, funk
from the bar, or these phone numbers
slipped into my pocket for later…
now, though you are home and I
am away pacing the patio beneath
magnolias, I wanted to say
this will be the last time.
I visit old friends
run pot-holed streets
where dead are buried above
the water line in leaning tombs--
circle the park filled with pelicans
and rain, where I caught my first perch
on a bamboo pole.
-"Home for Thanksgiving," appeared in Southern Poetry Review
We sway on iron chairs, a little tipsy
round a glass table streaked with weather
everyone drinks, it could be mid-summer
with demi-glaces, dark rum and sour
warm and humid, the bricked patio
grows moss, always feels like rain
we sway on iron chairs, a little tipsy
sip from tin tumblers, no one enjoys this
way into night more than my grandfather
in his white Panama hat, seersucker suit
half-listening, peering through tinted glasses
at our lit trap, perched like a hungry gull
we sway on iron chairs, a little tipsy
a zap, shock, into its blue fluorescence
then another…makes us happy
despite the truck cruising the neighborhood
pumping gas into the air—can’t kill
this evening, my old man smokes, who cares
we sway on iron chairs, a little tipsy
as a cockroach the size of a fist gets hit.
-"Mosquito" appeared in Antioch Review
Drifting Off, East North East
I’m the one
inside the crowded bistro
reading alone
with an untouched martini
a young woman in floral dress
pedals by
a boy sits cross-legged
at the trolley stop fumbling papers
why close the sculpture garden at night…
shadows play best in lunar light
out my window, people sip
gossip, and form a standing patio
no one notices me listen
too much perhaps with myself
like a cheap shot
of tequila after many rounds with friends
it’s been a decade
since I first sat alone
through a matinee
while sunshine cooked my car seat—
a stinging my thighs
have not forgotten.
-"Drifting Off East, North East," appeared in The Southern Poetry Anthology
Home for Thanksgiving
And from the visions of veins like arteries, and from months of plying
Between can and can, vacant as a pint in the morning…
—W.S. Merwin
The city buttoned like a woman
sealed by her favorite angora coat
even silence could not escape humidity
in the moment it takes the wine
glass to find the floor— I am not here
for the creased linen suits, funk
from the bar, or these phone numbers
slipped into my pocket for later…
now, though you are home and I
am away pacing the patio beneath
magnolias, I wanted to say
this will be the last time.
I visit old friends
run pot-holed streets
where dead are buried above
the water line in leaning tombs--
circle the park filled with pelicans
and rain, where I caught my first perch
on a bamboo pole.
-"Home for Thanksgiving," appeared in Southern Poetry Review