Carpenter Ant Hatch, Spring 1991

by | Jun 16, 2022 | Poems, Poetry

Carpenter Ant Hatch, Spring 1991 Once the decision is taken, it isn’t hard to kill them. I watch one clutch the body of another in its pincers, carrying it toward home. But I don’t let it escape. Yesterday, one of the huge flying males bit me savagely on the...

Lessons in the Cards

by | Apr 21, 2022 | Poems, Poetry

Lessons in the Cards While my father was teaching me the cold calculus of chance, the shuffling dance of probability in the mathematics of poker,I was learning the symbols of love and wealth,of war and death, discovering myself in the joker and the...

Substitution

by | May 28, 2021 | Poems, Poetry

Substitution Coming to work early you meetthe man on shift before you.It’s funny, he looks familiar,then it turns out you know him.He lives in the blue housenext door, white shutters. He says”Hey, didn’t know you worked here, too.” Didn’t...

EKG

by | May 26, 2021 | Poems, Poetry

EKG The doctors in their white smocks hoverlike priests over the hieroglyphic lines,searching for some omen there. Among those scratchings on graph paper–a computer’s entrails, marks a bird’s footmakes in the dirt, tea leaves, palm lines– one...