Ocracoke Island 2008Four months of mountains,
snow, ice, then rains, but all that is gone in a red song that twirls by the sea. God, how poetry saved me, almost alone on an island they call, “The end of the World.” (First Published in The LebaNon Sequitur 2013) |
From Thunderhead Peak
Valleys dip and darken,
mountains curl, gnarl, rise, dive down. Wind blows puffs of dandelion to Eastern peaking Sun between parted emerald slopes--the magic-hour erupts in brass beaks of Wood Thrushes. The rock and root-strewn path turns down to black, but life wits for you here, wants to see your lips part, watch the sun-touched name move between them. (First published in The Junction 2013) |
At the MÜtter MuseumThe infant floats in formaldehyde;
the mosquito in amber; blood preserved. Too terrific, all of humanity saved. In the jars above that shelf is a brain with all its fissures exposed, the carvings misunderstood as art—and the skull that suffered the crater of blunt-force trauma is laughing because one of our faces reflected against it in the glass case will be peeled from its skin and join it on the wall with the other forty, and we shiver at it but must go see what’s in the MÜtter Museum. (Published in Of Life Infallible) |