Sojourners
By Poetry Issue 105
Not angels, but pale travelers
through time, come back
Not to condemn or to reverse
our narrow acts,
But to remind us, by their soft
disclosures, what
Is still to come.
Aubade
By Poetry Issue 103
This silence before
love pulls itself
apart, against
the current of its own
longing, is the most terrible
silence I know.
The Bells
By Poetry Issue 101
All is still. God has come and gone.
Read MoreLandscape with No Variations
By Poetry Issue 89
The view from the west-facing window dwindled and gloamed. The flies continued to buzz, ________________________the mice never set a pad down. The flies continued to buzz. Who is the father of time, death or his arrogant brother?
Read MorePrayer with Rotohammer
By Poetry Issue 86
Retrofitting Grace Cathedral, San Francisco Let my worship be this work and the force of each bit-strike on masonry. Forswear my doubtful tongue. Let my past words be what they are: failed elegies to the living word. Let praise be pain rejoicing. What rose like dust now falls and it is beautiful and meaningless and…
Read MoreJust Time
By Poetry Issue 86
It’s just time, the book I read, the letter I write, the window I look out of. It’s just a needle I thread, a sleeve I keep trying to mend, the spool diminishing. It’s just time inside of time, the future inside the seeds inside the pulp of the apple I eat, skin and all,…
Read MoreCreed in the Santa Ana Winds
By Poetry Issue 86
You believe He’s stronger than the desert wind butting against the fence, wind that ignites sagebrush, tears through the hills and strips the houses to ash. Despite your lips that crack till blood comes, skin that grows rough between your fingers, you believe He will be solid to your touch the way the bay is…
Read MoreCanticle of Want
By Poetry Issue 86
Lord of worn stone cliffs and the guileless trill of the canyon wren; Lord of stunted hemlocks, imperiled mussels, seeds that fall on shallow soil; Lord of boreal forests, of the fragile nitrogen cycle, of vanishing aquifers, spreading deserts; Lord of neglect and…
Read MoreThe Breaking Strain of Grace
By Poetry Issue 86
Holy Week again: unleavened sky, all tensions held past hold. Mostly, what I feel is the unlikelihood. These days, pick a miracle, there’s science to explain it. Say it’s nighttime in the Garden, Jesus praying in a bloody sweat: Hematidrosis—rare; not unknown— …
Read MoreThe Stars of Last Resort
By Poetry Issue 53
Imagine someday the splurge drains out of fall. Holding a melon you know a creek of light streams inside its rough burlap ball, but if you cut it open you know stars will fall extinguished in the dark. You know the quarrel of the squeaky porch swing, know the cold that stacks goldfish like knives…
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