Haiku Sonnet: Last Night’s Dream

We let the grass grow
to mid-thigh, until it fell
like cowlicks of swords
in a bull’s back. Vines
choked vines as if drowning and
rot stained new shadows
in the walk. Someone
said the sun will never rest—
night won’t come. Our eyes
weaving through growth, we
hunted for blue sky and found
white, the new dome of
the earth. I tried to [...]

Guy-ness and Behavioral Determinism

The other day I was walking with a colleague who is—Microsoft Word will flag the term—a masculinist. He feels men are fundamentally misunderstood, our gender differences not properly valued or accommodated.
Men can’t look at each other, he was saying, because males invariably interpret eye contact with other males as a challenge or threat. [...]

Haiku Sonnet: A Dead Sturnus Vulgaris*

Ants clot passages
into his breast, curtaining
the rooms inside and
the secrets of their
devoted emissary.
One eye faces up,
its focus broken,
stuck on distance. His oiled coat
hides spots too dim to
read in flight—who would
ever be this near?—but some
royalty hangs on
that—even in death—
won’t quite let us know him.
*Common Name: European Starling

Impractical Jokes

I’m bad at practical jokes—both as the perpetrator and the recipient. I’m somehow innoculated against their humor.
But I am a master of impractical jokes.
An impractical joke is conceptual, implausible, and almost entirely pointless. It’s a scenario that floats into your mind randomly and departs with barely a smile, like…
1. Drawing a [...]

Thinker / Blogger

Desert Island Discs. I only know the premise of the program and don’t even know if it was on television or radio or both. But I understand a famous guest would come on to discuss the five records (LPs) he or she would have to have if stranded [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Irene Keeps to Herself

Fingers trace vanished
words on her thigh. The letters
spoon and slur like snakes.
Her eyes roll in their
orbits. Past here the street falls.
Black roads bleed into
another town’s night.
A memory of church spires
rides like a burr snagged
in her dress hem, and
a lover’s window—a blank
page looming—explains
everything again.
Her finger spells the same name.

My Martian Postcard

Sometimes you wonder what aliens would make of this planet.
Take water parks.
Extraordinary resources and labor go into constructing all those slides and wave pools, all those water cannons and bubblers and fake rocks and waterfalls and cartoonish fiberglass statues. The marketplace requires a new, more imaginative feature every other [...]

Notes on a Failed Ghazal*

 
Most roads go somewhere, blind and unhindered.
These lines never reach margins, spending themselves
in eddies of snarled effort. Imagine driving
every alley, all lefts. Cats begin to recognize you.
Garages open a crack hoping you’ll carry trash
away. Then other traffic stops. Lawn chairs
blossom, as if you’re a sudden parade,
or the surprise an audience readies [...]

Vacation from my Vacation

Anyone paying close attention—or just attention—may notice I’m four days ahead on haiku and posted twice yesterday and three times today…all of which springs from my paranoia about standing still…and being left behind. Aside from a week in at a teaching conference in June, I haven’t missed a day [...]

Bedtime Story

Following blindly, mules
sagged under fuel
for sacrifice. Missteps
slid more loose
rock down hillsides.
Suspense paused,
focused shadows
on God’s altar. Abraham
pulled his son’s
hand. My son seized
a sigh, grinned,
relaxed his elbows
and lay back,
hands behind his
neck, waiting,
waiting, watching me,
me and Abraham,
knowing we’d tire,
blades midair.