Transcription of the Absurd

You’re not doing well. The mirror dims, and more objects are extinct to light. You think what fades here blazes elsewhere, furnishing another world’s illumination.
This avenue of shadows falls from the overhanging brows of teachers you’ve forgotten. Their motion has stilled to the palsy of atoms. Having mislaid the names [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Crazy Mary

He thought just one day
he might speak—eyes on eyes—and
not notice her by
looking away. She
surfaced as from ink, dark’s grip
still clinging.  Her lips
moved to shape words and
found machines stringing random
beads, a rosary
of the damned.  Neither
spoke in tongues they knew—stopping
was all either had
to say.  I passed pretending
not to pause or see.

King Ego, Part 78

At the end of her memoir Black Ice, Lorene Carey recalls sitting through commencement and awards as one of the first African-American graduates of St. Paul’s and wondering whether she would receive an award, whether she would do any more than simply graduate.
She feels a “greedy girl” roiling inside her and silently asks when [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Waiting for You

Afternoon dwindles:
the sky gathers birds flying
to some unseen rest,
the evening sun
amasses on surfaces
like condensation,
as if the inner
light of objects collected
like dew. A life so
infused—remembered,
revealed—would drown desire
at last. It can’t last—
doors open to love’s return,
the body of night.

At Risk of Being an Old Fogey

Slang sometimes splits the world in two.
Take “cool.” As subjective, shifty, and contextual as “cool” is, nearly everything is or isn’t IT. A sort of Heisenburg uncertainty principle of language governs the word—the first stage of becoming “uncool” is being identified as “cool.” Nothing stays cool for long. When something falls under [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Mumiah At His Post

In the last village,
each day sees one birth, one death.
One citizen counts,
awaiting his day
marking tallies on a wall
at the edge of town.
Only he stares out
into bare plains, eyes searching
for dust not raised by
twisting wind or hope.
When he dozes, dreams visit,
hearts of suns beating
in the black heavens, much too
numerous to count.

A Holiday in Reality

I don’t have a literal hammock, but I’ve been spending a lot of time in a figurative hammock lately. That is, it’s spring. I’ve been watching sun and shadows move, listening to birds’ songs overlap and separate, looking for clues to new buds, and breathing air as if I meant to.
Wallace Stevens [...]

Chicago Springs Forward

Today’s weather allows repairs at last.
A glazier climbs a ladder to replace
a pane cracked in October, a fissure
through every winter view, through snows
and thaws like a before and after scene
where nothing changed. My neighbors—ready
to be freed—leave their inside voices, shout
small talk, smile hard, and squint into daylight
saving’s sun. Unwrapped and undivided,
they want to be [...]

There it is, Eeyore

I remember few conversations from when I was young, but I recall my mother equating each of my brothers and sisters with Winnie the Pooh characters. She seemed to know the character for me right away… but paused before saying “Eeyore.”
Maybe she meant to preserve my feelings. A reader might remember Eeyore by his [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Flying Home

Thinking of this space
as a ship, I wonder if
I’m a passenger
or cargo. Carried
in any case, I consent
to this craft, bow to
another pilot.
When I was young, I felt
the earth traveling—
a loose-wheeled wagon
beneath me—and heard each
shimmy and squeak as
progress. Now a wind bears me
without wing or sail.