Book o’ Verse

That tree at night is so beautiful. I saw it. I saw the beauty. I claim this vision with my artist’s eye. My eye so true you crave to see the beauty I see. You pose and claim you saw it too. You didn’t see it.

Escobar couldn’t hear so good. His cold — the same cold he was complaining about last month — had taken root now, deep inside the curly spots that led from ears to brain. You might think he would open his eyes wider to compensate, to pull in extra visual cues. But he was going the … Read more

on the plane ride home that I might be the one who dies young — that flimsy-bodied office worker whose organs gave out. Then the smiling round retired banker capturing me at the local tea shop telling me only the rich are happy that I don’t really know Orange County that I’m due for a … Read more

He achieves a softer plush with his face letting the gray grassy mass accumulate. Short enough he will not chew a whiskey growth a little moss. Something to rub at during meetings. that won’t come come off on the fingers.

Would you like to dance? A gazillion years later would you still like to dance? Put on high boots and a dangerous skirt? Are you addicted to garbage this weekend? Age inappropriate? Will you shake that thing? And are you all the rage again?

“He’s breaking all the time!” our cabbie says. He’s what? “The cab in front of me is breaking all the time!” Oh my lord. Somebody stop him. We need time! And then of course I realize it’s just that it’s late and I’m skating along. “He’s braking all the time” is all that other car’s … Read more

Other boys stay out late and smoke. They use bad words. They worship false gods. When they ask me to come along I say I’m busy. I’m keeping my hands clean. It’s been hard work, really really hard work keeping my hands clean all these years. I do not live in a glass house. I … Read more

Chicken and eggs lobbed from twelve feet away keep him fed. They comb his mane when he’s sleeping. They clean his chin with a sponge. Planted in someone’s garden next to the tulips. Cool dirt and pebbles pack up tight against his belly down below below. They let him roar when he wants to roar. … Read more

Counting beans, one for every word you said today. A waterfall of frozen lima bean conversation. Bright bean rage. Soft, velvety heirloom beans. Bean opera. Beans buzzing in a thick glass jar. Where do all these beans come from? — these beans, with no apologies. And why is it that you find yourself at this … Read more

He described his life as a series of tasks filled with the description of those tasks how he’d cut the boards what he did in the cotton gin how he’d made the metal bracings for the chair in the front of his house that you saw him in most days. It was like asking a … Read more