when the quiet eyed boy who spends class scribbling soft words onto paper meant for diagrams and equations who creates worlds out of pencil and freedom from the gentle movement of his fingers and wrist asks “would you like to see my notebook?” say yes when the sparkling girl whose laugh is so loud it […]

You needn’t go far To notice the difference. The ground is the same The trees are still there But the air feels wrong. There are no skulls, no bodies No cheap horror film cliches. If it wasn’t so stifling, you could almost enjoy it. But it’s always so stifling. It used to be a pilgrimage […]

My dad shovels the snow from our driveway Like a monk cleaning his monastery. I watch him from the bedroom window, Back bent into old age, The cupped hands of his tool raising The snow’s soft animal And putting it down again amongst its kind. Like a prayer, the thousand doves of winter Fly up […]

Trust not a word I say, not one lick or spit of hot-hit-whisper. Don’t let me beguile you, peacock feather dance, melt the air above my head: this is no magic, just a rotten science. Resist the urge for compliance: pat me down, put me out, smother me with your rags. Clothe me in black […]

So often we see the ocean tinkering neatly in its own space. Bouncing the wet bodies of swimmers like grandchildren on its knee, sucking the loose tooth of the shore and brushing clean backsides of jetties. How fascinating to see the waves break rock for once and shower over the small children on their stomachs, […]

you are moved by the earth, you are moved by the earth hold it in the rage of the river something’s come loose this is water jumping off a cliff without wearing its bathing suit the audience sits on the bank are looking which here means nearly crying are all saying all in all your […]

My instinct tells me the wind is cooler I prepare for the torrent of birds Growing nervous, the bitter air is engulfing me Raw snow drifts lazily to the rocky floor A group of geese pass by To Africa! I cry, I fly Over the mountainous terrain and winding streams Never looking back. A new […]

It begins a comedy, a pocket-sized calamity, as eye and lens turn to sky, and there, fuzzed and haloed, sallow and pale, the moon shrinks in its socket. Slowly, slyly each night, it wisps to cobwebs, fizzes to ash, no longer the prize opal, but a synapse in the empty sheath of stars. And the […]