Found a used copy of Wisława Szymborska’s View With a Grain of Sand at Third Place Books this afternoon. It had an inscription on the title page. Normally, I would pass up such a copy unless the inscription were by the author. But this one drew me in enough that I knew I had to buy [...]
A combination of the inscrutable and the transparent… To ensnare the damp and roll around in collusive glory holding nothing to the flame but an exhale Photographs tempt me I recoil from my own wishes— no, desires I have no trouble pronouncing the name just in speaking it without sounding desperate I am reverent but [...]
It takes practice… I may not be the king of the Irish exit but I’m certainly a prince or a duke or something (19 March 2019) I have books available. Links to more information here. Or, if you like, you can use PayPal to donate a buck (or whatever amount you'd like) to help support [...]
Something I have been thinking about for a while. 1 Profuse apologies and profound regrets it was not so long ago that seeing sunlight again felt like an impossible ambition buried under strata so deep they may never have names Without change in my pocket an afternoon stop for coffee and maybe a piece of [...]
Sun! Warm! Tanning bed soaks up sun on the sidewalk Car trunk bumper sticker tells me the answer to a question it does not specify and which I have not asked Preschool playground is empty school hasn’t let out for the day I should probably file my taxes get that out of the way but [...]
I wrote this at the Green Lake public library while waiting for friends. Since I was not using a computer, I uploaded this photo as a placeholder. The following is my slightly edited version: I eye the man standing over there with suspicion He looks like me but not like me like those photographs of [...]
This day will go quickly—best to make note of it while I can… I have now completed fifty-six cycles through the Gregorian calendar three-hundred sixty-five and one-quarter days of what we call a year As I enter my fifty-seventh cycle there is not much I know beyond that I am a slave to my mundane [...]
The title comes from a chapter of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Saint Genet; the rest comes from an afternoon ferry ride with a supposedly ‘routine’ escort by Coast Guard vessels, and the news. My attempt at commentary isn’t successful, but if I still think this poem worthy after some time has passed, I will have plenty of [...]
Tonight’s reading (It’s About Time, at the Ballard library) was the first one I had been to in what feels like forever. I wrote lots of new poems during; this is one of the couple that I liked… Ingredients too short to reach the full flavour they were promised Convolution calls hesitation to prayer it [...]
Another weird day—I’ll leave it at that… Too tight here too loose here Fraying threads uneven edges More wrinkling every day Fabric tearing no longer stretching Scratchy Brittle in the sunlight damp in the shade Colours faded, yellowing stains not coming out deepening with age Ill-fitting Comical in appearance one might even say embarrassing But [...]
