Scene: a bus stop, January, snowing, windy. Three people huddle in the small shelter. They are strangers to one another, though they have met here before. The winter-pale youth is thumbing his phone. The large African woman in blue jeans and a quilt coat is reading. The ambiguously fleshed old man, to whom they have … Continue reading A Tiff on Frost and the Rapper, Drake
Tag: poetry
Cooking Up a Bad Poem
The way you mix feelings is you take a good old fashioned lie—no more than four pounds worth, drop in a good dollop of candied sentimentality, add a puppy dog, a baby, or somebody who died of a broken heart, mix it up with a good six pack of barley mash well fermented, pack the … Continue reading Cooking Up a Bad Poem
In the Green
In the greening pasture beige stalks of last year’s yellow sweet clover Posted in response to the Ragtag Community daily prompt verdant.
From the Kitchen Window
From here to Idaho vast empty white miles of snow— my coffee, black.
Snow on Rose Canes
Snow sifting through thorns:: old couple:: no need to speak of odor of roses.
“Cynosure” Fumbles a Masterpiece
Eric Studdard was working on his three hundred and twenty-third masterpiece. This one would be a winner for sure. He had spent the better part of an hour on it and the poem was currently two hundred and ninety-seven words long, with thirty-one lines and seven and ¾ completed verses. It was composed along the … Continue reading “Cynosure” Fumbles a Masterpiece
For Student Poet Dreaming of Inspiration
She’s no mealymouth art, that damned mother of wordbirth— nothing fickle about that old tart. Honest as the odor of earth true as you in all your affairs, she is nothing—only your worth. How you carry her loamy dares to amend the alter altar you’ve built of your damaged despair will tell only the soily … Continue reading For Student Poet Dreaming of Inspiration
The Shaman in the Cave
Here in the silence, the smoldering dark, breathing the smoke of smothering, the odor of smoke and grave earth mingling, he moves his ocher wand. The bull is earth and mind. His terror at what he makes is less than the joy, much less than who have just left mother above to find this bull … Continue reading The Shaman in the Cave
Two Minds, Same House
She prays: “the rainbow— It's the full promise of god!” He sniffs the wet earth. In response to the Ragtag Daily Prompt word: petrichor. And the Word of the Day Challenge kin .
First Snow: Haiku
Snowing. Grass stems bow the only sounds: hissing wind And last summer’s chime