Absent-minded

Death is not a reality, but the absence of a reality. ~Thomas Merton

They say I’m not dead yet,

but surely this is hell.

Not the inferno they preach,

but a sterile hallway, narrow

and lengthening beyond

my poor eyesight.

They say at the end of it,

there is light, but I’ve  been there

and I can tell you, it’s a white wall

decorated with an oil-painted face

of God, hung to remind  me of his absence,

how even he’s abandoned this place.

Ridin' the Blue Train

Better catch that steel-wheeled ride

‘fore it takes off and slides on down

those tracks ‘cuz it’s a one way ticket,

and there ain’t no goin’ back.

Jump that rail and don’t tell Mama

cuz she don’t ‘bide by rattlin’ rooms

and shakin’ hips, but baby that song makes

you move in all the right ways of wrong.

How It Happens

A part is not the whole,

but apart from it and merely

a part. The glass filament

is not glass though it reflects

light just the same.

When under a microscope,

the thin thread is a Great Lake shore

in winter when the waves want

for warmth and yet do not freeze,

reflecting the sun upon glassy surfaces

but not sun itself.

November's Child

I.

When you spilled out of me,

the trees were shedding reds and gold,

baring their heads before the gods.

They took you from my naked

arms, bending down as autumn limbs

towards dropped, round fruit.

It Ain't Over

*My "narrative prose poem" for today's prompt morphed into flash fiction. Thanks to all the one-stoppers who indulge me and take the time to read!


Officially, it was the wiring. But really it was that black, bitter, backstage boil we call coffee, and I never would have spilled it on the frazzled light cord, its spliced rubber casing revealing live wires, if it weren't for Giselle who makes me nervous even when I look at her from the scaffolding above. When she dances, removes one shimmering cloth to reveal a dark thigh and then another to uncover her breasts overflowing from a robin’s egg blue bra adorned with sequins, I come undone, shaking and shimmering like one of her veils—the silvery orange one, flame-colored, heated as my face. And this time I spilled over like my coffee which first just sizzled on the wiring some and tricked out the spotlight, as it winked on and then off and then dimmed and finally dramatically cut just as Gisele cast off her last veil and the audience clapped an unknowing irony.