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Category: Poems

Poems written by me.

sometimes coyotes

April 11, 2016 • • Leave a comment

sometimes there are coyotes
all around the house

they bed down in the front yard
in the trees and behind my memories

asleep with one eye open, stars
twirl the pole counted and known

they’ll rise and howl at owls, the moon
or anyone else impersonating

strangers who come up to the yard
they stalk a defensive perimeter

while we sleep while we dream
they open the fridge and eat

the last of the girl scout cookies
a little whipped cream for their coffee

come morning they’ve gone, a few
paw prints in the dewy grass

///

Not a Literary Journal: Ode to an Animal | PAD 11: Defensive Poem

hideout

April 9, 2016 • • Leave a comment

the fossil sky is a thick blanket
fog rolled in from the bay
the trees have disappeared
muffled birdsong drifts in waves
the sea is so close
other continents just a stone’s
throw away skip away
I’m invisible until that stone
thunks into the tide and sinks
down to the seafloor down

///

PAD 9: Hideout Poem

After the Show

April 8, 2016 • • 1 Comment

we spent twenty bucks and two
hours to see a movie that showed
only things

we already knew about
urban blight dark corners
love magic and the way

popcorn smells after it’s
been stepped on by
two hundred shuffling feet

black birds land
on a chainlink fence rattling
so faint it could be your failing

heart
the ambulances were so far away
they couldn’t come in time

beyond/beneath

April 6, 2016 • • 4 Comments

and she said the waves would come
the way she said the stars were gone
beyond/beneath were synonyms
and for once I listened and believed

how was it that we found our way
in imaginary boats
across this sun-flecked sea
where she said sharks once lived
beyond horizons and beneath the waves

ocean curls waves foam
sand toes sunk deeper down
lifeguard flags snap warnings of sharks
and wind and high concentrations
of bacteria washed down from floods
two days drive north of here

how was it that we found our way
how was it that we found this sea
how was it that we knew the stars
how was it that they led us home

///

Not a Journal: List Poem about a Body of Water

Dear ladies of the Mothers’ clubs

April 4, 2016 • • Leave a comment

see your son

see your son
a gun in his hand

belt of shells
around his waist

disarm that boy
teach him—

find diversion
without annihilation

///

Erasure poem from a letter written by M.B. Davis of Waco to the Texas Congress of Mothers in 1910 regarding the widespread killing of grackles by children who were encouraged to hone their marksmanship skills

Source—“A History of Austin’s Love-Hate Relationship with the Grackle” by Andrew Weber on kut.org