I. The weekend after the spring snowstorm that brought down trees with with wind and weight we are all at the gas station filling up our portable tanks for the generators before we hit the dollar store for candlesticks, bottled water, batteries. The checkout girl tells me “I made my kids go for a run.” … More Elemental
On my way north, once again, Highway E curves into a 25 mph crawl past a post office and a closed taxidermy shop, toward the county building that was once my elementary school that now holds snowplows. A hawk flies low over the road toward the sun setting nearly in the south – so close … More Bliss
I retrieve the already-read newspaper for my dad from my car while we wait for breakfast omelets in the late afternoon, his eyes patched from melanoma scrapes. He looks like he got in a fist-fight. “Thems that die are the lucky ones!” he had said, coming out of surgery, a pirate. “Arrr, arrr, arrr.” The … More Halloween at the Blackstone Diner
black heeled shoes sink in the spring-batter Earth that takes, that tallies, that deducts one more from the zero step; just step around the shallow warren, where five baby bunnies wriggle in the warm black dirt butts up, born and living and dying in this brief aside, this hyphen, inside the sanctuary my friend’s father … More St. Edward and Isadore Church; Exeunt, Pursued by a Bear
At 100 N. Jefferson St in Green Bay, City Hall: the ladies of democracy all have their backs turned when I walk in for early voting, attending to the copy machine, the phones, the trash, as though it’s an ordinary day with the office in order. Finally one of them, my age, with bangs, takes … More The Ladies of Democracy
In early October along the river’s edge, deer hooves have printed the mud with quotation marks, although they had nothing to report. They drank the cold water in silence and slipped back into the woods. It’s not yet five o’clock but the sun is already stumbling sideways and falling behind the Wisconsin treeline, rays flailing … More Undone
Waterbugs unzipping the seam of river, hundreds of Vs opening before me, it is warm but I know what lies ahead the mirrored clouds afloat on the smooth surface in the late August twilight now sink to the riverbed like cotton candy autumn leaves while fat walleye heave and leave blooms of mud behind in … More Falling Through
All I have is a list, a promise of 11% back, and an unwieldy cold wet metal cart into which I throw the too-big chainsaw gloves for men, the joint compound to hold naked seams together. I’m trying to reconstruct true north. In the garden center aisle with the grass seed, dozens of little birds … More The Birds of Menard’s II
Finally I drive away from that old house in the city where drama was spooling out across the little screen I held: alcohol, of course, family wounds, threats of suicide. I pocket that silenced screen like a take-out container of active angst – and I go to Menard’s, where I hear you can save big … More The Birds of Menard’s – I, uncut
I’ve cast the three who lived (thrown, broken, mending) upon the river of the world (flown, dammed, bending) they drift in solemn leisure (whether will or chance or fate) like shining broken windows (not shy not strong not vain) their wings catch specks of twilight (the eddies hold them fast). Three pulled toward the lake … More Casting Die
