Torsade Literary Space Sand (poem)
Sand doll-forms at craft shops bald sightless blockheads you should watch tutorials on airbrushing rose into cheeks think of a doll for every ethnicity the minefield mechanics of noticing shades of blush Populate a scheme to become a catalogue name with burials in a fold and tab-together box they were smoothed […]
Heneglwys: Second Allied Forces
The Folly Allied Forces Heneglwys Sir, In my researches into the vanished tribes Which predate the era of Coel Hen Who, I need hardly tell you, is known to the modern reader of the nursery rhyme A prelate of that village which calls itself Heneglwys Whom my […]
Jumping Off: I Could Not (poem)
I Could Not [the first of the guests uses a phrase] …that morning… She will have you join her, mourning A songbird’s nest shot scattered from a spruce Clumsy handle of her rake It is all a metaphor for loss [the second of the guests plays about] a potent word […]
Jumping Off: If Only Others (poem)
If Only Others Outed from bark made mulch by thermal shock the beetle takes a chill that starts a frail cough a worm’s meandering charts the tops an infestation census-taker feels the math mid-century young adulthood’s unexpected death on meeting the proboscis of a predatory wasp synthesis in skin and bone […]
Eight: answer (poem)
answer the fleas die and the seedling trees die ants that mob your cabinets and the crawling earth’s answer to your time of living, wait to shock you in a flare of lit escape on bathroom floors at night Of vegetation again, ivies and vines ugly flowering things in beds made for […]
calmly (poem)
calmly rise, this is the answer tell yourself I’m better, I’m free Free to go, yes? Yes, one white-clad figure addresses, the others ignore yes, through those double doors keep walking, painless arches flattening back straightening Please. I want, you say, finding the way cordoned, by strange gryphons To go home. Why? […]
Eight: question (poetry series)
question Natural feeling Natural detachment and attachment in— Balance, Right Balance, and the difficulty in the word itself A sub-question. Do we want it to mean a mean, a quality, a norm, a commonality How much and what sort our chief concern? Which is to run ahead of the point And if […]
it hates (poem)
it hates it curls into a fetal crouch reminds itself of cruel conspirators doesn’t remind from the couch, it watches a song once loved now sells young customers sailcloth uppers organic scuffs, the rubber sustainably harvested, no less… Harvested! Makes it think of the old tractor brand… All snuffled up by corporate […]
Bride to Be (part eleven)
Bride to Be (part eleven) “She was in my father’s camp, what would hers do? Dishonor…would he assume it so? The cruelest of his knights, bloodiest of his kin…” Aldebert halts in attentive pose In sudden suspicion Wildulfa sees her gift of prophecy under trial “But there was no slaughter, rather, trickery…” […]
Amulet (poem)
Amulet First carry a sofa onto the stage Foreshortening allows the table feet away The table is useful, its magazines and small props Prompting lines of dialogue The actress has complained about the velvet That carries light beautifully but catches at her tights She and he perch in three-quarter pose More athletic […]