What do you say to a man who is dying? A fact, just as it is twenty-eight degrees out, the sun set three hours and thirty-five minutes ago, this is a man who is dying, but is still alive. Careful, things fall easily here, this the greatest distance, none could be further. What hues in that sunset! A slow burn over the bay, the city changes its face, harder edges of night, but ribbons […]
The body fails in predictable ways but sometimes I am still surprised when someone is and then is not
A closed door with a cart outside, coffee service with paper cups, three small apples in a plastic bowl with plastic wrap across the top— a bereavement tray, nothing more to be done. This is the work. Sometimes I get a small, ripe grief lodged in the back of my throat, taut as a grape skin. And what for? I only know that you were. I can’t say any more.
1. His left hook split your face and sent your brain to visit the farthest reaches of your skull, your head bobbing on a sea of fractured shouts receding into a single point of high shining song. 2. The cut kept opening up like a family secret. They made you stop before you lost the eye. You went to war, re-crossed the Atlantic, survived, came home, got so drunk at times that you let my […]
OPTIONAL POETRY 