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dVerse Haibun #15
I am awake. I wake too early some days. No pattern – not just odd days, not just even days, or days with certain vowels or syllables. Some mornings I seem to wake in a neon blast, a flickering slap. A toothpick in the eye. My bones are agitated the way Jackson Pollock’s paintings sets…
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Rattling Along with Sunday Whirl
“Honey is the only food that doesn’t spoil” — anon Cars rattle, and that could move my dad to break into a howling burst, an echoing drawl of purpled complaint. And my sister and I, we’re split apart by pillows and sleeping bags because we encroach on each other like a red tide, and we’re…
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Miz Quickly on Marilyn Monroe
On a Slip of Dark She reminded me of a little bird, perched on black and white. A feminine sea, inconsistent as sunshine, and she was stucco pale on a shriek of dark. That unbalancing dark — follows you around; prey in the background. Like a stage. Like a shadowy prop. And it would stutter,…
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A Diminished Hexaverse for Poetic Bloomings
Beyond Rust and Red My pen grows silent as a silhouette. I write of life, write with dues of truth’s bones. Beyond rust and red. My first poem was red like that. An untidy dark appetite. Like father’s final words, gone unheard. He slept, We slept. Silence. Poet form: “Diminished Hexaverse” — A…
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For Miz Quickly ‘s Old Coin
Salt and Lot’s and Lots Saturday morning was library day, and on the way home, two or three blocks past the Holy Blessed Heart Catholic church, was a tavern with red neon lettered signs scrawled across the windows. I can’t recall its name; we weren’t allowed to look directly at it. And Mum, in her…
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Draft – Up & Up for Miz Quickly
The Unwritten Rules of Repetition I was adrift in my own story but that’s what children do. Draft themselves into an idea and run with it as if those ideas are playmates. I lost that ability to slip in and out of self-indulgence, the owner of my own centre. My universe. And I’m not sure…
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dVerse Quadrille #10
A Bit of Lunch with My Cousin A piece of me came to visit, a genetic piece — my cousin. We shot the breeze over lunch. Fish and chips by the seaside, Bank Holiday Monday. Weather poured down on us, and the wind howled fury — my hair tangling in ketchup and chips. My…
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A Nonce for Miz Quickly
A White Moth Wander I am a moth dressed in cheddar white, a celebration of what I once was. Before my edges blurred heavy and dull, and will heaven lower itself when my time comes – so I can reach it? So cruel and so tender is age, and my virtues are scarce vices; my…
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A Bit of Sriracha Red
A Bit of Sriracha Red I. My strongest memory from kindergarten is not what I learned, although I must’ve learned something, but rather it’s the iron grills in the wooden floors that blew hot air from the belly of that hell-shackled furnace hidden in the school basement. I’d stand there on the iron grill,…
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Dry Rain for dVerse Poets
Dry Rain When Dad passed away, I was a wailing shell. There was no goodbye, no tidy ending — not like the movies. There’s nothing pretty about a howling heart. And I keep thinking about the airport, last time I saw him, you know — hugs, and I said, ‘See you soon. Love you, Dad.’…
It's Still Life 