Three Poems
Doreen after Seamus Heaney Slack of tongue I wasNearly small as a sedge-warblerWhen the young girl’s bodyWas laid flat as a blade. Her death still haunts this vestal daughterWho recalls the river’s long curve,The shrunken dusk of nightfallWhen the farmer looking for lost calves Discovered her out in the webbed marshWhere toadstools and stumpsRepeated themselves…
Read MoreOpening
It hadn’t rained in over a month, and Mark was going on a date with a girl named Angela. Across the city, the grass had turned pale and matted. Every day the air seemed to deepen, finding space to carry even more heat and damp. Mark had been killing days walking along the river, starting…
Read MoreTwo Poems: That Beaten Eye; Let’s Go In
That Beaten Eye For miles along the Klutina Riverbefore it gives itself up to the Copper,here in July, thousands of men,women, their young big and small,grandparents, loners, campers and lodge guests,all, toss their lures in the tumble,silt-brown scallops of current and white frilltopping the shallow rocks, every hookbouncing along the invisible stoneson the chance for…
Read MoreNessie
It was a cold day in Scotland as most of them are, no doubt. The Bastard lay dying with a woolly cap pulled down around his ears. A cough rattled around his chest, like loose change in trouser pockets. Fiona, his wife, pressed her hand on his forehead and sighed. Through the window, he could…
Read MoreA Warm Place to Laugh
Like most kids, I thought my parents married for love. Mom was nineteen, living at home with her widowed mother. Dad was twenty-six, living at home with his parents. One evening, my father’s sister invited a girlfriend home for dinner. My father was sitting in the living room reading The Birmingham News. Their eyes met.…
Read MoreMarion Roach Smith on Teaching Memoir
In his play Man and Superman, George Bernard Shaw wrote, “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.” Yet where would we be as writers without the gifted and passionate teachers who’ve ignited our creative flames? I’m with Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes: “Just goes to show that Shaw didn’t know his arse from his…
Read MoreAcrylic on Canvas | 5 Paintings
Two Poems: 14.; 15.
14. I write for no reason. It’s bound to happen. There are no weapons against it nor are there any readers. The speaker is me: a joker who pokes around with words. The most powerful weapon is indignation. The most powerful weapon is indifference. It does not produce happiness. Professors with their odd relationships. Women…
Read MoreTrash
He’s pretty sure he doesn’t do it for approval, in hopes that neighbors or passing cars will notice. He doesn’t do it entirely out of pique, angry at careless behavior. He does it mostly in gratitude to the place, to keep it good looking, to remove evidence of disrespect, to belong to it, and if…
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