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Selected Poems

Tonight the trees bend over like broken / old women picking up their husbands’ / empty whiskey bottles.

— from “Drunk Again, I Stumble Home On Euclid And Cut Across Thornden Park Baseball Field”

Last Year’s Poverty Was Not Enough

The day hadn’t begun well, but it was just another day in a long line of mean, anxious hours. Time mashed in on her like a couple of hands folded hard in prayer.

Bubble-Boggled

Addictions

Tetris, freebase, house plants

Mayflies

What magnificent creatures they are, these friends who populate the complex ecology of the life I share with Julia. Refreshed by their presence, confirmed by their affection, we rejoice in the sight and the sound of them.

Drinks

“I’m going to do you to death,” he said. “How about that. Not because you’re pretty, either, because you’re not, but because you can’t stop me. How about that.”

Serpent’s Tooth

We lived in a walk-up apartment house. The three of us would anticipate his footsteps, listening for them up the tiled stairs and across the tiled floor. He had a variety of walks: a confident, sober stride; a penitential limp; a self-assured, rocking swagger.

Radical Steps

Both of them hit me so frequently that I still flinch at sudden movements. I learned in my bones that alcoholics don’t have relationships; they take hostages.

A Little Irish Water Music

Occasionally, when Dad belted up his trousers with twine, she turned as brittle as snapbread, but in those early years, she was usually willing to dismiss our days as the pruning from which decorous bloom must one day erupt.

Young Dog