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
Eau Claire looks good but shaggy, like Jason Segel or some other not quite A list actor needing a shave and a few days without beer, the grass is just now green and the University is torn up, the Sprites statue in an unfamiliar place or maybe I just don’t remember where it was, it’s … More Metal Detector Man
There is a man built like a hay bale in the row in front of me, a blue flannel shirt, he comes in alone, jams his long legs behind the seat in front of him, and much like a bale of hay, he speaks to no one but stays hours and hours to have … More At the Nick Offerman Book Reading Event In Milwaukee
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
The scolding birds caught first my ear, then drew my eye into the tangle of midnight black pine tree silhouettes pressed hard against the late afternoon palette of deepening blue strewn with soft blooms of white, my glance caught then by the barred owl with his back against the black bark and his head … More The Bard Owl
First winter snow has tripped and falls and falls, I lace my boots and take my sheltered lens; Behind me, windows throw a yellow pall of slanted patches on white-trousered lawns; Snow stills the trees and fills the prints of those who walked ahead along the unlit road; We will not meet, my pace unhurried … More Unleashed (A Sonnet)
Halfway North 