My Poems
Somewhere Else
We’d expected this,
their naked, red heads
ducking deep into the flesh of a fox
dead for days—drawn to its suffocating scent
lingering like sweat on the hot road—
their ivory bills peeling back the sorrel fur,
picking meat off the bones.
It was dinner for two.
But when a car approached, their wings sprung open
propelling them around our yard. Mid-loop—
what surprise!—a red-winged blackbird
popped out of the Black Locust nearby,
hopping onto the thick back of one vulture,
screaming like a thrill rider
as the mute scavengers flew two laps low,
then landed, finally shook him off,
and walked back to their meal.
And soon enough,
only the pelt remained upon the pavement
like a hunter’s splayed-out rug awaiting the traipse
of traffic, the stench like the birds,
hanging around death
somewhere else.
The MacGuffin, 23.2, Winter 2007
Second Honorable Mention, 2006 National Poet Hunt Contest sponsored by The MacGuffin
Election Day
Driving beneath a rising
helix of blackbirds,
autumn rain
ushering in my fifth month
of impervious pain, this day
is different, not because long lines coil
around polls, not because the temperature
hovers at 60 degrees,
not even because the birds seem
to sweep the rain
up with them
so drops no longer
land on my windshield,
but because I want
to go with them,
to spiral up into the gray
like Elijah, sailing through
those saturated clouds,
shedding my clothes,
my damaged flesh, my
bones, candidate for heaven
who just leaves this world,
this dominion of skin.
Title poem of my chapbook, Election Day, published by Finishing Line Press (2006)
Semi-finalist, 2005 poetry contest sponsored by The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review
Elisha’s Bones
2 Kings 13.20-21
What was it like
in such premature burial,
tossed into another’s tomb,
ears deaf to the men’s
shouts beyond you,
feet numb to the pebbles
pressing upon them,
breath escaped like a prodigal son,
and eyes blind to the prophet
dead beside you?
Sudden and insane,
you collided with his frame,
lingering power of God
seeping from his side
infusing your soul,
and once again,
you heard your heartbeat
suffocating silence, you found breath,
coughing dust from your chest, your toes
dug into the ground below them,
you saw light.
And you knew your place,
as though you were Adam
emerging again from clay,
the bones of Elisha having released you
from your grave.
Christianity and Literature, 54.1, Autumn 2004
Of Things Unseen
Scattered throughout our lawn this fog-
infused morning, gauzy hammocks
hang, each stretching from tip
to tip of lean summer blades,
dew-drenched,
sagging as though a tiny body
invisible and round
lies napping,
the weavers working
within the earth this calm dawn,
last night’s storms
now distant as a deist’s god,
while Maggie, as we wade through
the grass, her young black snout
plunging through sheet after tissue-thin sheet
of silk, sneezes . . .
Parting the white thick air
we roam farther down the road
where more threads appear,
this time knitting together
square upon wire
square in the corn field’s
fence and like sails,
inhaling the sea-like breeze,
evidence everywhere
that the spiders do exist
among us, though we’ve seen none thus far,
though the only discernible sound
is traffic on a state road
howling in the distance . . .
Mars Hill Review, Issue 25 (the last), 2005
Magnetic Hill, Moncton, New Brunswick
Water running uphill—
that, you don’t forget—
and it’s quite the sensation
to shift into neutral, feel your car
picking up speed as you
sail upwards with the stream,
or so it seems—the brain
just can’t comprehend it.
I was too young then
to understand, but now I find
an old postcard my mother
had saved in her scrapbook
and see the contours of the land
induce the illusion, the magnet
is the same there as elsewhere,
the ride works best when you
silence your engine,
let go the brake.
Sou’Wester, 35.1, Fall 2006