It's Still Life

  The Brugge Fish Market The poor arrive from evening mass, fluid as water, they pour into the market. It’s late doors, after hours, orders of the church, but not ’til 8:00. After the best is gone, perfection is sold. Atlantic. Baltic. Whole and fillets. Fish gone soft and eyes gone milk as the chipped…

Platform Number 4 Legs crossed like the number 4, he reads a book, sets a backpack at his feet. Eats rolled lettuces that drip red sauce. Home is wherever he removes his shoes. Intelligent eyes, and a face like old lava. There are some people you just beg to know.   It’s National Poetry Writing…

  A Case for Cake (a Pantoum) It was a party, after all, a clown, raspberries and noise. I can still taste the cake. I can still see the red balloons. A clown, raspberries and noise, and we ate on pink paper plates. I can still see the red balloons. The clown had flipflop feet.…

  A Case for Spring (Villanelle) Has gone, be gone, I said, this weather’s all wrong. Winter’s too long, its wet months spread. Has gone. Be gone with a blackbird’s song. Unsung. Unsaid. This weather’s all wrong. The wind’s too strong for March has fled, has gone. Be gone Rain. Rain, all nightlong. Falling silk,…

  Periodic I’m reading the Periodic Tables. I learned all this useless stuff in school, but forgot it all. Anyway, it seems that I am a saline nothingness, a chip off the moon, a muddy spring day, I am mundane, maiming, an uneaten fruit, the sound of speech, a comforter, comforting, dusty, flaking, bone white…

  I. Lilies I stood tiptoed, looking down the throat of a white trumpet flower. It was open. Wide. As a hungry child, or a belligerent baby bird. Stamens bright as a sunset, deep as a vein. Lilies. Spilling white everywhere. All over Grandma’s coffin. Couldn’t stop looking at them, haunted by flowers. I was…