Category: Poetry

Midwest Poultry Show

November 13, 2018

Behind me a man at the Minneapolis airport says: “I’ll see you at the Midwest Poultry Show” except what I hear is not that but “Midwest Poetry Show” which makes   slightly less sense but it’s too late, I am already thinking of their sleepless night, all the poets waking before dawn and coaxing their … More Midwest Poultry Show

In Dreaming Stray

December 13, 2017

I. At some point, it became irrelevant to teach little boys how to tie a horse’s harness to a tree after a morning ride as it will become irrelevant, yet possibly charming to tell analog time, and write in cursive, and develop 35 mm film (these things yet in my lifetime). There was, there will … More In Dreaming Stray

Linneman’s

December 10, 2017

At Linneman’s RiverWest with McKenzie, my firstborn, who is somehow of age, beautiful, and strong, despite it all – we’re just one drink in, waiting for her boyfriend Zach to play, when I hit the ladies’ room — “I’m comin’ out!” the lady in the half-open stall shouts and so I pee behind the imperfectly … More Linneman’s

August

August 31, 2017

The end of summer this year is like a personal assault like a slap from a wet leaf, the leaves fluttering down and the colors just turning and sun setting less and less far north and the mist on the river the acorns landing like a shot on the deck and the yellow school buses … More August

Black Horses Wet

July 4, 2017

And shining in the green field As though they are just-painted models In someone’s miniature world, Set just So as We fly down 577 while Sun and rain leapfrog over each other, Empty houses, fallow fields, A woman pulling weeds In a rectangular patch Reclaimed from the wild, Destined for the wild In 40 years … More Black Horses Wet

One For the Road

June 22, 2017

I am drunk on this new summer twilight, the world’s wash is golden-hued burdens liberally poured, and so I will roll in the fields where the corn is laid out in straight, sober lines, the light Creeping between them like water rising slow – I will lick the tree trunks and the underside of leaves … More One For the Road

Subtext

April 30, 2017

i. Porterfield Elementary   jutted like a brick mole on the inside bicep of Highway E, just down from where Roberta’s dad sold tractors to the flannelled German, Norwegian, and Polish farmers digging up the rocky soil around us.   Here I would learn subtraction from zero, borrowing a ten from the neighbor number like … More Subtext

Folding Winter

April 3, 2017

Brown beer bottle clots spot Winter’s arterial ditches; He coughs up litter – golden bow from a Christmas wreath, a decaying newspaper fat with ads. A dead deer is suspended in the cold water at the edge of the forest, glassy eyed – a Russian Tsar, preserved; Winter clings to the brown land, a lover … More Folding Winter