Tina & Rico and Bernard & Theresa

Photo by Casey Lovegrove on Unsplash
Tina & Rico and Bernard & Theresa

Mama made the switch 
jump the track
choo-choo
she said 
as she stuffed applesauce 
up the baby’s nose.

Tina wanted Rico
wanted Rico so hard
she nearly split
that watermelon boozed hard
Rico split
and Tina went away to Bernard.

Bernard brave as a bear
falters his father face
on the staircase to Theresa’s room.

Bernard will only say
that Theresa is already gone.
Theresa, that strange huntress,
ready to sign her way through
a father’s vigilance;
her soft virgin’s virtues sing
an eight-bar blues
about the fall of night on the Neva river.
Her river runs through it unnamed. 
This is the smallest word. 

Word comes to Tina,
Mama and the baby are on the train
home.
choo-choo

Published on The Laundry Line April 19th, 2025.

Waiting for the Rains

Photo by JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash

Waiting for the Rains

20 miles to the north the Bolt Creek fire burns 
up a draw towards the ridge climbing 
along lines laid deep in the soil
it burns first one way
then another
the weird sentience of wild fire
its imperative to consume and grow
now blocked and burning back on itself
burning the trees to charcoal and 
then burning the charcoal again
hotter and hotter
we too are burning 
and re-burning the same ground
waiting to be quenched.

Published on The Laundry Line 22 April 2025.

Arson

Photo by mehul dave on Unsplash
Arson

Dawn cracks open the world,
forcing its upper windows ajar.
Letting the first spark of
light into the darkness.
Dawn takes darkness 
for granted.
Takes her job of breaking night 
for granted.
Dawn is careless, heedless of
how brightly she burns.
She doesn’t concern herself with  
the flammability of daylight.
She wants only to extinguish the stars.


Published on The Laundry Line, 15 April, 2025

Prayer for an August Morning

Photo by Liliana Del Rosso on Unsplash


I, unaccountably, love vultures.
Shy and overly friendly,
they’ll carefully pluck the buttons from your shirt.
No really, it happened to me.
Well, it was only one button.

Gaining a vulture’s trust takes time.
In the heat of a late August morning
try a hose that sprays cool water
under their wings and across their heavy chests.
Afterwards, glistening wings held wide,
the vulture will smile.
Head tilted just so; his beak left slightly ajar;
his black eyes rolling in ecstasy.

But I digress…
I always digress.
The slow presence of prayer 
and the slow drying of the vulture’s wings.
These are only talismans.
Against what— I can no longer tell.
Against the loss of memory?

But I want to forget God.
As if he had simply walked away
from the world
on that August morning
while I was bathing the vultures.

Published on The Laundry Line, April 8th, 2025