Lips stained blue from the holy, splashed ichor,& in your eyes lies something, an ember, a shine—a wicked, sick rendition of the barest fire’s flicker. She stands among fires & piles of ash, sickerthan her deceased, stomach like a brine,lips stained blue from the holy, splashed ichor. You laugh. SheContinue Reading

As I was sorting it all out,I found among my brother’s papershis passport application, completed.And official photos shota year before he died.He must have been two pinched to file. Whereas I am flush, I realize,thus properly documented.Border crossings, customs, proofof citizenry? No problem. Just this summeron my first trip northIContinue Reading

They come to me for a summer, saying, oh Sappho, teach me song and poetry and all things lovely which trickle like honey off the tongue. Here, in fields a-hum with bees and studded with clover, away from the eyes of men, they sit in circles and learn meter andContinue Reading

When spring comes,frost ghostsnew grass blades–flowers hold their breathshiver–waitinguntil the chill has passed. then open their bloomsbeneath the warm sununafraid.Continue Reading

In these waters lie gravesof my father’s blood, ancestorswhose final breath was water –rows of savage mountains,mantle of sea closing around them. They understood wind change,barometric drops, electric smell of lightning.Tide seeped inside their shells,turned in their bones – nowhere to hide. A glass dome covers me,covers ruffled bay, whisperingContinue Reading

Shortly after losing my best friend, I met Alan and his daughter, Sabrina, at a local support group. Over the years I lived through Lori’s biopsy, diagnosis, chemotherapy, radiation, remission, reoccurrence, and then her agonizingly slow death as she fruitlessly sought more trials and more treatments. Alan and Sabrina’s lossContinue Reading

I once met the Ghost of Lim Rix.Named Anon, he used mischievous tricksto taunt and persuade meand finally made merhyme words which we never should mix.Continue Reading

I was summoned from the void by a witch named SuzanneWho named me, faced execution in her village in Scotland.Her daughter Deborah was spared, taken to safety in Holland,Her own power grew under the watch of a Talamasca man,Whom she, as an adult, came to seduce—A numinous legacy bound toContinue Reading

We moved out there in spring. The trees in that place were something to see, out in the wind, blowing like nothing all day and night, howling through the cracks. The lights were small, and our faces loomed big at each other all night around that little table. I setContinue Reading