Category: Childhood
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Jacksonville, Illinois
i. Why do I think you are here with me still, taking note? I pull off the highway, end on a dirt road as usual. Strangers look long, out their way, as if destiny is known. I wish you were gone, really, truly gone, that that would sink deep in, become an organizing piece of…
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City river
How its surface hides the undulation on its bottom; how its edges spill over and are spilled over into. How as it is fed by another, the water tumbles, turns over broken concrete slabs; how herons perch there, oblivious. How when the tunnel overflows with rain, it releases a stench into the summer breeze that…
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Bunkhouse mornings
The forest floor crackles, catching dribbles from above. A breeze shifts, fresh spray showers the twigs and dried leaves. I can smell that rain and those damp, quieting mornings, cool moss under my feet. The blue jay’s harsh, long cawk, intrusive. Why did they not swoop down on us? The breeze builds through high branches,…
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Jeanie
Skies hang today like my gray-brown bed sheet from when I knew you, discolored by countless nights of filthy feet and scraped knees from spud and ding dong ditch and ghosts in the graveyard, never washing white. How long it takes to see the nonwhite on the sheet and then longer still to decide whether…
Poems from in between 