Browse Topics
Aging
Birthday
Ropes pulled tight at the huge plastic tarp / we tied from the house to the trees / like a sail, in case it rained. / It rained. I became fifty. Then the sun shone, / then the moon.
January 2021In The Middle
of a life that’s as complicated as everyone else’s, / struggling for balance, juggling time.
January 2021
How I Got To First Base
Earlier that same afternoon All-Star slugger Dave “The Cobra” Parker had revealed to me the secret of hitting: “Hit the fucker hard, and hope it goes far.” I keep this revelation enshrined in the same chamber of my heart where my rabbinical ancestors kept their favorite Scriptures.
October 2020
If I Were God
If I were God, I would make a world just like this one, where everyone comes raw and naked and dependent into it; where everyone enters bloody between the legs or through the cut belly of a woman; where nothing is for certain and there is so much to learn.
October 2020
The Hairdresser
sees the old woman — wheelchair bound, pushed by her daughter — glance / out the window, and goes in back / to fetch a shower cap. The woman tugs her daughter’s shirt and says, almost / inaudibly, It’s raining. / And it is raining. Barely.
July 2020Selected Poems
— from “Wanting Not Wanting” | I wish I didn’t / want things / to be other / than they are
June 2020Waiting For The Coywolf
I’ve read about a new creature called a “coywolf” — the offspring of a coyote and a timber wolf. That must have been what I saw. Waiting for it to reappear gives me something to do.
January 2020
Someone To Listen
The first time he calls the talk line, it’s because he wants to die. Whatever has happened in his brain has made him a stranger to himself.
November 2019
Kenny
after my mother’s funeral standing in the receiving line just / below the altar rail shaking hands with people I hardly knew / when Kenny a face I hadn’t seen in twenty years appeared and / grabbed me and hugged me so damn hard the wind went out / of me
November 2019What Was Astonishing
What was astonishing / was that after a summer of running around the yard / and dragging our rubber dinghy a mile to the lake and rowing / and doing backflips off the dinghy and bicycling around the lake
October 2019
