Just drink the coffee.
I call it bloom because that’s not dying. We’re about to see the bloom, I told my friend. It’s growth but not a flower. Not canna not rose, not casket nor corpse; it just means something has opened. My friend draws blood. He says he cried last Sunday. Another counsels the sick and the doctors … Continue reading Pandemic Verse
This morning I saw Jesus (I call it Universe) reflected in the eyes of a Black Man I picked up on Dixie Highway in the rain. He looked younger than me, had dreads and dressed in Carhartt layers and carried two work bags. Tools, heavy like my step-father's (I've been trying not to … Continue reading Untitled Poem
I lit this candle today for the first time in years. I let it burn while I said my Prayer To the Hustle-Gods and The Universe (because this candle came from Paducah, from a barn where I might have died but instead gave my first commercial hummer-- I hate that term, but it flows. I'd … Continue reading That Time I Pretended to be a Masseuse in Kentucky
I'm not your native tongue. I speak halos and dreams; my mouth drips hyssop and honey. Syllables roll out like deluge flood waters and fill your neat streets and you, you prefer the ocean. It has definition. You can find it on a map and say, "It goes here. This is how far it stretches." … Continue reading Je Ne Parle Pas
The trouble is you never asked me to give it up -- the job, the scandal, the booze, the fun; I just knew it all had to go if we were going to make it. You said, "I think you like the way they look at you," and I could taste the venom on your … Continue reading 22 Weeks
The station at LaSalle and Van Buren This, too, is a compiled re-post of things-I-put-on-Facebook-that-didn't-belong. I'm a Chicagoland native. I spent the first twenty-seven years of my life in the city and various surrounding suburbs; this is where my roots are. In that twenty-seventh year, I fell into infatuation with a man from Western Kentucky, … Continue reading From Whence I Came
