Grand Rapids Bridge
May 29, 2021
Early evening sun/ Caught under the arches/ Words stuck in my throat
Category: Places
The House on Monroe Street
April 11, 2021
That I am going to walk through today with a stranger has more rooms than I need and needs more money than I have and I don’t need all that space now but it is old and has a wide porch that looks over the Fox River, flowing north, and it has enough room for … More The House on Monroe Street
Riverine
January 24, 2021
Takes me in its teeth, it’s a sleek wolverine shaking off glassine beads of the setting sun, gleaming over the river cold and clean; Riverine carries me in its furling current; my soul adamantine, unchanging, always changing, the lean walleye and muskies now follow me, hollow seems what we leave upstream, the tangerine sun bleeds … More Riverine
Snapchat Lullabies
November 15, 2020
Sleep swims slippery through this seine of mine tonight, I reach over to the nightstand and hold the world in my palm – even when the world is distant I seek what is spare, I seek out the edges. I click on tiny blue circles along the lakes and rivers as I move north – … More Snapchat Lullabies
Waiting for Comet Neowise
July 26, 2020
When I pull onto Sunset Beach Road in the purple twilight, a couple is already standing entwined in front of their truck, tail lights pointed at Lake Michigan, peering into the western sky; I am not the only one who thought to watch from the bay. Do you see anything? they ask, without preamble, as … More Waiting for Comet Neowise
The Lights Flicker Once, Last Call in Suamico
March 24, 2020
And it’s the beginning of the end of the world – the regulars are turned out of the taverns, red-faced and singing defiantly, swaying and carrying their jackets under their arms into the almost-spring night, leaving behind the warm beer-sign bubbles, the cracked cheer of the bartenders, the pilsner philosophy of their fellow compatriots holding … More The Lights Flicker Once, Last Call in Suamico
Heart in Darkness
January 19, 2020
The heart is a muscle The heart is a fist it’s strong and it’s wary, this beast in my breast. My heart has been sleeping My heart has dreamed dreams – It wakens, now, flexing, it growls and it gleams. My heart is gone hunting, My heart leads me on Through starless dark forests, on … More Heart in Darkness
At The Mellen Township Board Meeting
August 22, 2019
It’s the melancholy tail end of summer, a Wednesday night with waning light when I walk into the basement meeting room of the fire department on County Road 342. It smells like 50 years of bureaucracy and a musty bathroom and my claustrophobia tells me there is only one exit but I sign my name … More At The Mellen Township Board Meeting
Interstitial
July 10, 2019
Five-thirty’s afternoon light fades from the Menominee where this water bug zig-zags northward over the glassy sturgeon-black surface of the river; a needle pulling threads of silver-speckled sunlight together, close as lovers, stitching a narrow pocket into which I slip secretly the ruins of another unmatched summer’s day.
The Nest (Or, a Father Considers the Odds of Raising Successful Small-Mouth Bass Offspring)
June 24, 2019
That afternoon at the cabin we sat by the river after I had cut up those small trees that you dropped at my feet with the tractor – (an offering, a challenge, one that I tore through haphazardly with the new chainsaw, black and yellow like a drunken, terrible bumblebee). It was quiet after all … More The Nest (Or, a Father Considers the Odds of Raising Successful Small-Mouth Bass Offspring)
Halfway North 