SPARROWS SMELL A flock of sparrows drops inside the grove of lavender stalks, flutters around devouring seeds; flies away smelling essentially pretty. FENCE GAMES Staring down the wooden fence line rails hold hands as posts yell to the fence across the field, “Red Rover, Red Rover, send Lucy right over!” MORNING TEXTURE Like doves gathering for breakfast fog grips the splintered fence until mist lifts like a falling feather in reverse slow motion so shafts of sunlight glisten

Today’s news wasn’t about you I just read about a rockslide in Banff; one dead You haven’t lived there in a decade and my thoughts still ran to you You live a hundred kilometers away in suburbia It’s a workday but the chances aren’t zero It’s not impossible that you returned home, greeted your family, and embarked on a familiar hiking path, and the universe’s luck hasn’t favored you, and with it my enthusiasm for us has been punished I won’t know for certain until I see you a

White Cross I walk along the National Mall. Peace and solitude at last, I look toward the alabaster temples that illuminate with hegemonic brilliance. A vast power structure, its framework as glaring as Venus in the night, conceals the combined memories of imperial architects projecting their immortal light upon hopeless steel giants of slave labor. From the hive-minded U.S. Capitol, where two rival cults meet, four elegant building blocks--granite, marble, limestone, and san

What Dark, Foreign Wind? A small, incandescent butterfly, at the center of a crossroads in a dream that we can’t quite tell whether it’s...

Less Than I’d Hoped For / More Than I Cared For So far, things have turned out a little differently than I thought they would: no real,...

a divine dinner tune   when we gathered around the kitchen table, holding hands as my mother said grace, the clatter of plates rang like...

At the Store Downtown They thought you hit me or beat me and I didn’t have to correct them, but I did Made them laugh I was told later...

Dandelions I realise that what life means when the sun rays fall over the dandelions grasping the beauty , not as a reflection, but as an...

AIRBORNE Primeval, mined from its rainforest burial, uncovered, wrenched and hauled, trussed, dangling in chains, transported for people...

What Did You Say? A middle-aged woman is speaking to me at Berkeley Bowl grocery store, her words a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces....

Mrs Loq and Mr Lac My wife is a novel and not simply any novel. A tome: wordiness stretched to the nth degree. I, on the other hand, am...

Initially they were called Ivory Towers professors had access and the privileged. Later “Watch Towers” Access expanded and restricted....

Deception If it were as simple As pulling a black rabbit Out of a white hat, I’d do it in a flash— Spare the tricks of the trade One last...

My Poetry I don’t want my poetry to be a list of complaints No one wants to hear that including me I don’t want my poetry to be about me...

A SHOP ON HAIGHT STREET The window’s full of tools to open eyes— icons, idols, glass beads, halo polish— discounted. Prices scrawled on...

And the remnants are here Sans sticks No tufts of grass in their mouths Sapiens of a past eon They are chatting away easily On fragile...

Treading through No-Choice In the multi-colored war-zone of the Middle-East different groups fight and God on the top of the sky watches...

ON THE BEACH Moon pulling strings, tide rolls in with a haul of writhing kelp, uprooted pebble and shell. When it’s time to ebb,...

Setting Course She is setting up her garage sale, telling me her life story as a series of whitecaps, no, no, another no, hope churned to...

“I Ride the Bus” Frantic first-world fears Foam up at the spa-adjacent coffee shop Crafting an overcropped canvas On which bedroom woes...