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Poetry
Almost Cha-Cha
I tell people that when I was born, my mother / was on drugs, and so she named me Brett. / But what I don’t tell them is that she almost / named me Charlotte and wanted to call me / Cha-Cha.
September 2021It’s Friday Afternoon In The Florida State Penitentiary And The Men Read Poetry
and Ronnie says Robert Hayden got / it right, a whipping be like that — “the face that I no longer / knew or loved” — damn, that’s it, right there and / Ronnie doesn’t blame his mama for beating him so bad, but / maybe she could have kept her pipe in the car and then maybe / he never would have ended up in a foster home
July 2021The Buttonhook
My son sprinted to each traffic light / in his black hat and dark Sabbath suit / while the elderly congregation two miles away / waited for him to help lead morning prayers.
June 2021Before
It’s not as though I was going on dates, gorging / on the daily bread of sex, before the governor told us all / to stay home.
June 2021A Slip Of Paper
found amid the rolls / of gift wrap: / a Trader Joe’s receipt / from December 23rd / eight years ago
June 2021Near The End
Without her glasses she couldn’t see, / so she’d touch her thumb to the bristles / of the two toothbrushes / to figure out which one I’d used, / then she would use the other.
June 2021Wanting Things To Be Different
A relapse of Lyme disease: / fever and chills, flickers of pain. / I want to sleep all the time, and my arms ache. / I lie on the steel grate that juts over the stream.
May 2021Access Road
I don’t know if other people feel like there’s a life / running alongside their so-called real life like an / access road runs alongside the main highway.
May 2021Lucky Pick
At the library / you can ask for a “lucky pick,” / meaning the librarian will choose / a novel for you based on what you tell her, / like blind dating or a toy / buried deep in the bottom of a box / of cereal, because there are still things / in life that might surprise us.
April 2021My Mother Is A Peaceful Ghost
In my dreams my mother keeps walking out of the kitchen singing, / You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. / She never sings past the first verse.
April 2021
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