Replacing Therapy

A Conversation Between D. Patrick Miller And Tom Rusk

When a person agrees to accept this value system — which means pursuing respect, understanding, caring, and fairness within oneself, while also requiring them from others — I can use that agreement to great effect.

Forever And A Day

This moment, I realize, with all its ludicrous and painful imperfection, is as perfect as any other. It doesn’t need to be improved; I don’t need to be better.

My Campaign Diary

I run for president the same way. Every few weeks, I go to St. Mark’s Church (a half block from my house), mimeograph leaflets, and stick some in my attache case. Whenever it comes up in a conversation that I’m running for president, I take one out.

An Unbelievable Illness

There’s a lot wrong with me. Researchers in Maryland have cultivated several viruses from my blood and spinal fluid, revealing that those viruses are rampant in my body. My body’s immune system flails away at them without success.

Talk

My father brought Jake’s body home from Colorado in a record-breaking blizzard.

Siren’s Song

Solitude seems possible; the sea and sky are wedged into the cove by two walls of volcanic rock. The horizon is broken only by an occasional sail.

Last Year’s Poverty Was Not Enough

The day hadn’t begun well, but it was just another day in a long line of mean, anxious hours. Time mashed in on her like a couple of hands folded hard in prayer.

My Savior Jesus

Not Jesus on the cross / but Jesus the boy / by himself, shivering, gazing into the water, / his hand cupping his scrotum, / the puzzling extra organ / attached outside his body. / I could believe in this Jesus.

Hard Bargain

Two head masks from West Africa, / helmets of rough wood, / hang on my study wall.

She Said, Can’t We Just Be Friends?

After a week of sleeplessness / he dozed off at last / in the hammock and was / awakened by the sound of dead leaves / dancing.

Selected Poems

Tonight the trees bend over like broken / old women picking up their husbands’ / empty whiskey bottles.

— from “Drunk Again, I Stumble Home On Euclid And Cut Across Thornden Park Baseball Field”

Blood At Solstice

A little death or at least no possibility / of birth, it gives up on you the way / your mother did.