Poetry
Mar/Apr 2016
Dress Blues
Bad luck, he believed, to throw away a Bible. So a small stack moldered on a table in the basement— a pocket New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs, a gilded […]
Poetry
Summer 2011
A Striped Bangle on Sope Creek
I pushed back the branch and it fell like a bracelet across my arm— a scarlet king or a coral, but panic like beauty stunned me, and I couldn't remember […]
Poetry
Fall 2008
My Mother’s Abscess
The receptionist, in her marbled booth, jabs a pink nail into the phone. All day, maybe, she hasn't noticed the potted ficus between the revolving doors. The potted ficus! Maybe […]
Poetry
Summer 2002
Little Drop of Wickedness
Ruckus around tie bird feeder—too greedy mockingbirds mugging a cardinal— and a small wind whirling up from the creek beyond the cul-de-sac, but no other disturbance, no ado, no alarm […]
Poetry
Summer 2001
Homage to Buck Cline
At the edge of town, just past Landers' Rexall Drugstore, the road whipped right, then hard downhill over the tracks of the L & N Railroad, and one night in […]
Poetry
Spring 1997
On Methodist Hill
for Joy Mallard 1 Shab of a plundered tomb, crust and leaf-stain, litter of wet newspaper, sandwich wrapper, pizza box, stench of sardine and wine— in the wind it hisses […]
Poetry
Spring 1997
An Owl
Twice through a bedroom window I've seen the homed owl drop from the oaks to panic the rabbit in my neighbor's backyard. Last night he paced for an hour across […]
Poetry
Spring 1997
A Room on Washington Avenue
On your way to meet a client at Mick's or that other restaurant in Underground your secretary sends you to, the one with the French name you always mispronounce, you […]
Poetry
Spring 1997
A Walk to Carter’s Lake
Look, above the creek, hummingbirds in the trumpet vine. Not too close, wait. See the green blurs stitching the leaves? Here at the edge of the millennium I don't imagine […]
Poetry
Spring 1997
My Uncle Sowing Beatitudes
1 When he huffed out of the woods at the foot of the hill, both fists clenched rocks. My uncle saw him before he reached the field, and stopped hoeing, […]
Poetry
Winter 1986
Homage to Little Roy Lewis
Three days I lay with a fire under my skin, in the guest room,in the twin bed by the window. The preacher in waist-high water, his Bible, the walnut frame,the […]
Poetry
Winter 1986
White Swan
Purple necks and green, fat drakes whiter than Easterlive on our five acres of suburban waterwith one gray goose, a Canadian honkerwho came a year ago and settled.And occasionally other […]