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Selected Poems

August 1996

Oh perfect word, shaped to meaning like a body without an ounce of fat: supple, strong, walking through the centuries like a god.

Glorious Failure

Bad news is supposed to travel fast, but this news took nearly three months to get from a snowcapped mountain in Vermont to my office in North Carolina. It finally arrived on a beautiful spring afternoon, eyes downcast, dragging its heels.

Me And Miss Messiah

Where The Parking Lot Is Now

I wondered how I’d feel when the place was gone. It would stay alive in my memory, but I couldn’t take much comfort from that. Memories we’re sure are indelible — how long do they really last?

Mark O’Brien’s Days

Mark O’Brien spends virtually every moment of every day encased in an iron lung in a room eleven feet wide and twenty feet long and seven and a half feet high.

St. Petersburg

Sunbeams

Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.

Jules Renard

Visions

It just bursts from me like a thunderclap, only there’s never any clap when my Vision grabs hold. It’s like I fall asleep, but my eyes stay open and the hand holding the pen just moves over the paper all by itself.

December 1995

I keep imagining that someday I’ll get caught up: write those letters, read those books. What a great imagination!