In Conversation

The American Joke The moon is a nudist. Up there nightly blameless and innocent, showing us everything. The moon is a stripper giving us the slow reveal forever w/ a miniature brain & nerves w/ its internal organs fully preserved The moon is 520,000,000 million years old or just a few thousand. An ass in …

At the Public Pool “My dog is so stupid,” this man in a checkered shirt points and says to the guy beside him. I look over to a patch of grass and see a scraggly little dog chasing its own tail. Then I see the man’s kid in the shallow end of the pool, making …

I Changed the Shower Curtain Liner Today 1 I am as alive as the slime in the bathtub, too long unwashed, and so hidden behind two vinyl curtains because one might not be enough, might allow a glimpse, however filtered and hazy, of my deteriorating essence. Thankfully the filter works both ways, provides a comforting …

Like Falling Rain When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out ‘stop!—Bertolt Brecht “Don’t start with the good old things, but the bad new ones,” he said in my dream last night. So, here’s to Amazon warehouses, banks foreclosing our neighbors, to poets writing grant proposals, and congress collecting unearned pay. To killer drones …

Things to Say When You Have Nothing to Say by Kerry Trautman (Roadside Press) Kerry Trautman’s Things to Say When You Have Nothing to Say is a collection that quietly dismantles its own title. These poems are anything but empty — they teem with observation, sensory immediacy, and a restless, searching intelligence that turns the …

Cafe Zoetrope (For William Taylor Jr.) After a North Beach poetry reading by a San Francisco writer friend I stop at the Coppola Cafe for a glass of red wine So very San Francisco …And a cute young bartender with coy curious eyes taking-in every facet every moment of this life before her Sipping my …

Jesus Freaking with Frankenhooker I hadn’t thought about Patty Mullen in well over twenty years, I’m sure. When I saw her name listed as a guest at the Full Moon Tattoo and Horror Convention in Nashville, I failed to put name to face. The biggest draw for me this year, aside from the fact that …

Dreiecksverhältnis German for “Love triangle” It sounded so much cooler in German, so much more complicated. And the geometry? Way more than three-sided. First of all there was Linda’s cat, Gladstone, who way preferred me to Andrew, even if Linda had known Andrew longer than she knew me. Gladstone liked me better than Linda, too. …

Kansas We got stuck in the full moon coming back from the liquor store our mouths full of mushy fruit some girl gave us at the After Dark Trailer Park eyes like brake-lights eyes like the red lights that blink on the radio towers around here that water our town with Classic Rock and commercials …

An Imaginary Undulating Conversation Between Old Friends To speak openly To be like water All vulnerability & Transparency To say “There is where The fracture started, look at the Splinters of you left in me, There beneath, there underneath Where you live a bloodless stoic I wish you to be as the water is…” To …