The man who loves you is nothing but a ghost. He walks through walls, his name on your mouth like prayer. —for my mothers The man who loves you is nothing but a ghost. He walks through walls, his name on your mouth like prayer. His name is what you tell yourself...
The poem I am not going to write excuses herself daily, needs to wash her hair, roust the dust bunnies from under the bed, empty the worn-out clothes that malinger in her closet. The poem I am not going to write excuses herself daily, needs to wash her hair, roust the...
I thought we were dead when Dave spread his maps across the wheel and took off his glasses to consult them while his semi careened unchecked down the interstate. I thought we were dead when Dave spread his maps across the wheel and took off his glasses to consult them...
The honourable mention in Room's 2011 poetry contest, judged by Elizabeth Bachinsky. There were so many errors in the newspaper obituary that no one knew it was my mother who had died. Momma, who had lived off the river, off the sand and rust-tainted water that fed...
Spools of odd and even numbers knot tightly around my fingers. Fractions like hieroglyphs people the tethered pages of my grade school days. At the hub of our long-winded kitchen, turquoise table on a checkerboard floor. Mother slices red apples on a pine wood board:...
this metropolis is hurly-burly— you’re striving with deadlines crosstown, half-drowned in long lists—consume that, buy this chase what’s brash and new— your strained schedule bursting with some added task always left to do while nearby, along cool paths sun sips...
The honourable mention in Room's 2010 poetry contest, judged by Jennica Harper. The first word took root quietly, self-sufficient oocyte into morula, split and grew new words, a semiosis in the dark liquid primordia of vowels. Punctuated by consonantal vertebrae: the...
Dusty, corralled by clear walls of plexiglass, they smell of age, the violent polish of pain. Red, mismatched, many, owned by the women who wore them, sophisticated, matching lipstick to dress, never imagining that by the quiet end of one day they would be nameless....
Every time she breathes the muscle hisses, a sharpness of tissue refusing its shape. No position is comfortable, all hold the weight pressing her shoulder onto the bed. Still she lies there, counting on her breath to draw her into the present, fluttering up to the...
Show them which goal is theirs and which goal they’re supposed to score in Show them which goal is theirs and which goal they’re supposed to score in show them the ball and how to kick it tie their cleats when the laces come undone let them stop in the middle of the...