Category: Poetry
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To Della Beyond the Veil
You yearned for your homeland. Always do. After the era passes you, you pass too. Music styles wane as moons, Norwood’s fiddle when new knew you, knew grandkids too, never me though or the little themes that we know, millennials make do. My how the strings request of me: “Play.” Can resonance reach across a…
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Monotone Readings VS. Oral Performance
When I moved to New York, my first real surprise was the monotone readings. Something about the MFA culture in this town has gone and whitewashed every reading series with this sort of monotone half-jaded, half-sarcastic voice. You’ll find this tone shared by nearly all poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction grads. I won’t name any…
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The Ballad of the Morning of the Writer
with deference to Stephen Pressfield Before she opened eyes, she heard Alarms — her shouting clock. She’d set it for her pre-dawn words. Her dry-mouth-taste: a sock? The children soon would rise from bunks And writing time would end But blank pages await. Tales trunked— They whispered, “Sleep again.” Children took out the pep from her…
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Rio Sunset Park
Ghosts in the gold, ghosts in the late Grate growing wet from grey waters. Ghosts in the water gushing its spray: Men in it which men aren’t mainly, Shadows and shades, shadows in spades Twinned and twining, twisting liquid Pining from physique, from playing rain: Where are the men within? White water at Nighttime walks…
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The Brooklyn Film Festival at Windmill Studios
A windmill guards wonder pictures: blades hedging bad ideas. Festival goers’ fists and feet vote as teams, very to very, sparrows—they echo spite for spite, but they aren’t right: Thous aren’t here. The windmill unwinds weathered not from spins unwound or spurning found sins. Windies gone whence called: nailed and neutered, naught milling here. It…
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Greenwood
Twenty-four crypts: teeming mouths songless closed, soothing whistlers they pucker: Thayer, Galdwell, Green, Michael — Greenwood blows cyclonic, sites of graves stirring waves up, staring stairs down for prey. Dowreys in stones displayed; stolen days, stolen children — stoves aflame the names! The dates! The native whistling low till lakes blow circular. Maelstrom made small…
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58 poems at 29 years old + The State of the Schaubert
On odd years, I’ve made this habit of doubling my age and writing that many poems. I did it with the 46 @ 23, the 50 @ 25, and the 54 @ 27. This year, I’m adding a tradition of updating everyone on the lay of the land. So here’s where things stand for me…
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Two Americas :: Thoughts on the Foster-to-Homeless Pipeline, the American Worship of Comfort, and Finding Your Calcutta
Now and again you’ll come across a strange night where you learn about yourself and, if you take action, those nights change your life’s entire trajectory . Tonight was one of those nights for me and I think I’ve placed a stake in the ground in a way that ten years from now will illuminate something of a…
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Inkwell • from 54 poems at 27
Her house was underground in a town that ends in “A” her daddy was a preacher but the preachin’ wouldn’t pay when her brother tried to drown cause he didn’t wanna grey I tried for days to reach her but she took a week to say meet me in the roundabout in the town square…
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What they Chanted • from 54 poems at 27
Out of the sidewalks & into the streets Out of the sidewalks & into the streets Out of the sidewalks & into the streets If there’s no justice, gonna be no peace, until there’s no more killer police Hey hey, ho ho, these killer cops have got to go Hey hey, ho ho, these killer…
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In the River of Man • from 54 poems at 27
find me in the river of thought and event carried by the current of contemporary men see me stack their pebbles higher into my modern wall damming up their river into my waterfall genius ain’t meaningless its genus is in genes from us we can’t be me till me ain’t we original hearts make original…
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If Ever • from 54 poems at 27
If you never wake I’ll die and master beside manner just to be the first keeper you see on the other side And if you lose the faith I’ll study eighty tender reasons to wait Cause I’ll never go Never leave you alone you can’t chase away this chaser won’t outpace this pacer I’ll never…