Hunting Gems

I don’t comprehend the chemistry of how geodes form
but their creation makes enough sense for my layman mind
to teach an abridged version to my daughter:
Some rocks may look dull, b […]

Little Betrayals

I was six
I knew he had a quarter in his pocket
I knew it was mine if when he roared
who is the greatest grandpapa of all
and the silver and Wedgewood china on table shook
and the Irish […]

Fate is read in the routes
of the snails that methodically
spell their own names in the park.

Leaves shrivel
and shiver off of white birch
trees.

Alongside an old church,
pigeons storm a sliver
of […]

The old poet who thinks he is young remembers the young poet who used to be wise.

Twyford James

Though I had my suspicions last fall and tried to hope it along this spring, the venerable h […]

For my sake

At dawn there are no residues left from last night’s shift.
I offer no sympathy to the crawling hours
of a newborn day.
With fog I travel across the city
to buy a large coffee with half-half c […]

Here Is the Paring Knife, Here Is the Metaphor

to cut the damaged parts away. So bruised and all.
Peeling the flesh of the torturer you become of yourself.
Here is the skin off your hand. The skin off your […]

Incandescence

Few will understand.
Light bulbs, for heaven’s sake.
But I was awash the night I found
spares waiting to meet my need
and remembered when need
was swallowed by the dark.
My little stash of l […]

I could have stayed married to David if he
wasn’t so unwaveringly chiseled. If his deceptively supple
face wasn’t so perfectly defined. If Michelangelo could
have given me a dress that was low […]

In a recent batch of ‘reviews’ from an online magazine, I was struck by the variety of descriptive words used to evaluate the thirty-five or so poems. They ranged from “funny,” “strong,” and “moving” to […]

Susan Muse has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2020 Poetry Contest
 

Clouds flatten against a gray sky

and cover what had once been the color

of bluebonnets only a moment ago.

Suddenly […]

Wendy Jean MacLean is the 3rd place winner of Streetlight’s 2020 Poetry Contest

Fenced in by the property owner
the beehive hut
of an Irish monk
still stands
as it has for fourteen […]

Charlotte Rea is the 2nd place winner of Streetlight’s 2020 Poetry Contest

So proud you must be, atop
the fence rail, its flat
black the perfect
matte for
your copper.
Your telltale […]

When insomnia provokes my wife or I to walk the footprint of our house, we sometimes end up at our bookroom. Bookroom is an idiosyncratic idiom of our family as my grandparents used the term, logically enough, […]

Susan Muse is the 1st place winner of Streetlight’s 2020 Poetry Contest

Peas are on.
The kitchen smells of fatback
and cornbread rising in a rush of heat from the stove,
unfurling around me like those […]

PORTRAITURE
Our dinner ends with watching Portrait
Artist of the Year. For Adele likeness is all,
while I focus on the how of its attainment.

Beginnings proliferate and lead on to
ever more […]

I am so sick of walking past the cute little signs that say
please clean up after your dog. really? do we want our ivy,
our pachysandra, our Vinca covered in pee and poop?
do we want our perfectly […]

 
A Chisel and a Rock
They say He created heaven, earth, and mystery:
The jungle lion’s guttural roar
The celestial twinkling of stars

Tell me
Where is your soul? And
does it move with you like the mo […]

In truth there was never a snake or an apple;
and they knew already about lust, had known forever
what creature didn’t

It was that they lived long
saw the wolf and the tiger grow old and die
saw the t […]

White spotted breast, orange and black
on your head—I wouldn’t have seen if you
were not warm in my hand, but dead.
At the thud of a window strike I ran
for the deck, hoping for merely s […]

Each year for the past eight or ten, I have been given The Best American Poetry by a member of my family at Christmas time. The adults of our family are assigned, on a rotating basis, their gifts recipient, […]