magpie's shiny things

Depot

Depot

I have no language but what I learned from shy-bred women
whose whispers seem all at once
rooted in myself
and in a tongue so alien that I can't decipher their warnings.

I have no heritage beyond what I carry in my left hand. 
All of my promise is shackled to the platform railing.
The train carries my mothers away, 
trailing smoke and cinders. 
I wish I could crawl between the rails
to search for clinkers in the gravel
the way my grandmothers did before the trains
all became diesels and their songs
changed away from minor keys.

Published on The Laundry Line August 12, 2025.

smoke season

smoke season

smoke covers us in summer now.

no one can breathe properly.
we don’t panic, exactly,
but there is a
growing foreboding.

by August
the smell is in our houses.
it’s in the sheets at night
in our towels in the morning. 
we begin to taste it in our food:
smoked oatmeal,
grilled milk. 

but the sunsets are brilliant,
even other-worldly. 
they reflect all the colors 
in the fire-driven sky. 
we marvel at them, 
post pictures on Instagram.
tropical paradise sunsets in
our northern world. 

we wait for the rains,
but summer holds on for
another month.
September is dry.
the fires continue to burn.
in the mathematics of
timber and tinder,
smoke is our new constant.

this is our new season for our new climate.
pray that this is not our final season.

Published on The Laundry Line, 5 August, 2025.

Iowa in Three Acts

Iowa in Three Acts
	(July 4, 1996)

I.
Last week Tommy was down to the hardware store
wearing his mother’s flowered,
	(floured?)
dress and carrying a taxidermied goat that 
he said
told him
that Christ wasn’t coming back. 

They sent the patrol car down 
to deal with the disruption and
Chief Johnson
tried to make him see sense
but you know Tommy. 

His Momma’s gone to Memphis
with an insurance salesman;
they’re looking for a retirement plan. 


II.
Grover Mains Street is covered in bunting
but what with Gus Atherton dying 
just three days ago
and the VFW in such chaos
what with the wake and all
that the ladies auxiliary never got
the lemonade stand set up.


III.
The color guard looks good this year. 
Not like the time Shorty Pinker’s youngest, 
	Tina? Tanya? Tammy? 	
		doesn’t matter she left town two years ago, 
		hasn’t even called her mother once. 
Anyway, not like the time Shorty Pinker’s youngest ran into the street 
and the color guard  had to detour 
though the floral display to avoid trampling the tot. 

Originally published on The Laundry Line, July 29, 2025.

Egress

Egress

How did we come to share this meal?
When did you arrive?
I wish there was no echo in here.
I wish you echoed less in my memory.
We’ve made no progress.
There is only one door, so we’ll have to use it
	if we want to exit.
If we want to enter instead, we’ll
	have to find another window. 

Published on The Laundry Line, July 22, 2025.

Materiel for Poets

Materiel for Poets

I want to…
crack open your earlobes
your earholes
your eye holes
to see you with my fingertips
to feel your breathing (berating?) pulse
under the heel of my hand
the derive the sum of ourselves 
yes to be one two or even three
parts of the universal disharmony. 
to bring us into the same patch of chaos.

I want to scrawl in chalk 
on your sidewalk
to protest
to plead
to remember that we
	you and me
make up the small army of our dreams.

mine is a martial art
hand to hand combat.
I use the weight of your (in)experience
place my hip under your expectations
reach over your apology 
and grasp your smallest secrets.
I will twist,
leverage
you up into the air—into the ether—into your own self. 
a self that you no longer recognize
as I have turned it 90? 
to its usual orientation
and while you are slightly dizzy
I offer you a new way of looking in a 
funhouse mirror.
if this trick works
you will never see true north again. 
I will have disarmed you
and provided you with
a new weapon 
a changed weapon
a sonic grenade 
pull the pin
crack open your head.

Published on The Laundry Line, July 15, 2025.