One Thing at a Time

Santa Cruz **** I call my mother from a payphone in the Santa Cruz foothills, listen to the dial tone and watch the moths flutter near the skinny porchlight of the ranger station. ** I got here safely. There’s no cell signal. The Redwoods hold the dark like an infant, and they are raising it […]

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Halloween Spell

Scallop broad, Tazgul tail, Bring bristling Knashing golf-ball hail To Jack O Lantern’s Yellow Gleam, Icy steps Flashlight beams. Rascal wrought- iron Rose and poppy dreams. XX Chocolate bars, White -holed sheets. Scissored labor, Penny-saver. Gravy-graver. Maybe later? Bright as ever. Halloween.

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Elegy and Praise Hymn

If ever I dream of the crooked trees green around the trunks, dripping water from their twigs, believe me, I’ve found the spot for my burial. *** It’s quiet in October on the narrow suburb streets with leaves resting under 10-year-old cars. *** I go running at four, and travel through dusk. My knuckles are […]

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A LITTLE PLACE POEM

Everything about this dream is electrifying –             the bolts, the ocean, the seaweed dying. There are faces in the lighthouse window –             Sleep on. Carry on. orange faces with sea urchin teeth.             Keep smiling. Keep calm. We’re dying to traverse mountains and undead to traverse canyons. The faces follow us down wide […]

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Dream Catcher Man

tells us the bad ones you trapped in your web – nightmares on dark purple sky days. Pure purple is make believe. Those clouds have blue undertoned edges – they’re stone cold, the puffed vapor more real than head dreams caught, strung in heart strings of hung traps.

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Swinging Lanterns

Sleep well or stay up and see flames make red hues – a vigil throwing up hearth fire over June frost. *** High summer cloud spread bonfire burnt wood on North beach. We drive away at 3:10 AM. The lighthouse spins, cuts and shines through thick fog. Just due west, lost thoughts lurk deep on […]

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Victoria

Cobble stones and angled homes. Abstract bodies in the attic. Playing in roses alone, singing Huckleberry pie Ursula LeGuin Raindrops never die, but river’s growing thin! Drought without thought to publishing. What is constellation without symbolism? What is poetry without beat? A film without a punch? (The film is grey on my camera lens. Disuse […]

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90s Movie

My Friends and I are Stuck in a broody 90s movie. Except, we don’t all live in the same city, and there’s less sex. Generally. Conversation goes from relationships to federal politics and then to other TV news shit that rolls by us like stacked up freight and we’re just lucky we aren’t hit. Level […]

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Smoky

The boy outside the gas station is standing against a concrete wall of the mini mart in dust-hot evening. He is standing but doing nothing more. The airfield two exits away is shut up and locked for the day and so no propeller planes slice the rocky-brown hills that are rimmed with a yellow-blue tint. […]

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