Torsade Literary Space The Culture (poem)
The Culture We are important Our three-letter alphabet Constructs our limited language The gravitational center Draws our attention-seeking message The message is I am important Yet you don’t know me On an oxbow The current passes A fallen tree, submerged At a cross-angle green, murky brown Depths, hot from the […]
Bones and Claws (poem)
Bones and Claws “To the living we owe some consideration,” Voltaire said, “to the dead Only the truth.” If only the lid stayed on Some carcass buried in an old tin can Might gas a little The sides might swell and split It’s hard to tell Whether it will blow or vent […]
Beauty (poem)
Beauty I know more than I have learned Others whom I fear Are kin to me and bear my colors we are broken one by one from safe allées among tall trunks Down through resined crowns the wind raises pale hair on our bare arms I stand again at the shore […]
The Comfrey Plant (poem)
The Comfrey Plant The comfrey plant has rooted in And can’t be rooted out Some adventitious pioneering Groping severed bit Might upend the foundation Can we be rid of it? An oily glow of truth Lovely virtue no one loves You would rather see buried deep Something not worth living […]
Give Away the Key (poem)
Give Away the Key Let your inside be your outside Inside Are you wedged like an orange, or Do you spill seeds like a pomegranate Are you bored out like a lock that catches Banged out like a short order Is your mind troubled Are you a clever puzzle solver Cleverness […]
The Wayfarer (poem)
The Wayfarer Where miles-long grow embattled limbs Above the sea, salt-hardened, east-laden Shading pathways wound through sand and scoured stone Each stone an anvil shape, each tangled crown Untossed by wind The wayfarer, led in hunger by a ghost Stares aloft to see a figure clad in spider webs Rigid with […]
Haunt of Thieves (part three)
Haunt of Thieves Part Three Only now the river Bedhokan She whose flowing waters Gain in strength and claim (For there is no answer to her whim; in their season, the iron clouds will rain) a goddess’s Authority to shape the land She cannot in her course be checked by laws […]
From The Impresario (part nineteen)
The Impresario Part Nineteen She rubs her cheeks and neck, not for cold If the night feels chill, to her this trial seems welcome She wishes she might bear the world’s pain Enduring all, if by some alchemy He might bide in warmth and tender sleep She slips onto her knees, […]
Note of Glass (poem)
Note of Glass Both ordained to meet had threaded each themselves the Past to the Place hers the soul collecting ants and mosses his unfreed, the patriarch beheaded affected lineage in unexpected ways of cashing necks stuck out for losses caps to wear and choices wedded to debt…debt to a woman, […]
Doctrine (poem)
Doctrine They said there was a sage and revered man Who for his vows spoke never, but did chant The psalms, his mien aloft of earthly cares And soul among the blessed…this was known A bird of fields, he, counted it a break with God A deeper thing than ordinary sin […]