A Poem for Veterans Day 2012

I was asked to write and read a poem for a local Veterans Day celebration. It's nothing I'll try to publish formally, so I thought I would include it here. Although it was written for the event, I had a very dear friend in mind.

Sundays With Tom

Tom picks at the sleeve on his decaf like it’s blistered skin on a fresh burn.

Unconscious, this tick of his. He fought in Vietnam and still goes back.

On different records far from here, we don’t speak to each other much.

Arizona won, Arizona lost, whatever. In my head Blind Willie McTell plays

a song I once covered at The Hut. In Tom’s head who knows.

He watches his alcoholic twin work mad push-ups in the lot.

How the church crowd, the cyclists, the dog enthusiasts miss him

I’ll never know. Some days Tom says that drunk holds on and won’t let go.

He cannot leave the house. A big woman in a Sunday dress strolls by. I think

“Savannah Mama” or “Love Makin’ Mama” would feel so good along my Gretsch.

Tom’s eyelids flutter rat-a-tat-tat rat-a-tat-tat, and he’s gone. It’s a twitch

he suffers when early services let out, and Le Buzz picks up its pace.

To me Jesus is just a smarter Santa Claus. When Tom tells me he saw Jesus

I believe he knows the truth. When the grinder begins to roar

his eyes go tight as trip wire. Whatever he sees, I wonder if it’s a trap.

Nice morning, Tom says. Wherever he goes, I grow easy when he comes back.

"A Certain Slant of Light"

In case you missed it, my latest publication came out last week at Cheek Teeth, a site for flash fiction, literary thoughts, and artisan culture at large. As a poet it was cool to be solicited for fiction (thanks again, Katey Schultz). I couldn't help dropping poetry a line, however (thanks to you to, Emily Dickinson).

"A Certain Slant of Light" was inspired by this past summer's lunar eclipse, which I believe occurred in July. The fam and I were out on the sidewalk, diligently watching the swallowing occur on the inner wall of our box projector.

Here's the opening. Please find the rest at Cheekteeth. Drop a comment while your at it. Share.

Layla, with the warm sun at her back, focused on the small white circle inside her cardboard box projector. A perfect, dark bite had been taken from its upper-right corner. If the moon had progressed further through the eclipse in this last second, last minute, hour, such progress remained unremarkable.

“Lemmee see, lemmee see,” Maia chanted, tugging at the underside of the box. “Mom, lemmee see.”

Layla shifted the box over the head of her daughter. She tipped it until, on the distant end, an incomplete sun wavered on the white paper they had taped there.

Continue to read "A Certain Slant of Light" here.

"Poetry, U.S.A." - My latest Feature at Cheek Teeth

Please drop by Cheek Teeth, the mouthpiece of Trachodon magazine, for my latest blog feature, "Poetry U.S.A":

Someone actually had the nerve to say to me once “Poetry comes from a place: if you want to write poetry, go there.” This “Poet” was well-written, respected, and (more significantly) responsible for my grade, so I drove halfway across the States and back looking for “Poetry,” searching for it in the deep canyons of Utah, sacrificing my Celica for it with a deer in the Sierras, reading the deer hair stuck in my Celica’s grill for signs of a new direction. I drank forties of Mickey’s malt liquor on Mission Beach, hoping for a vision. Considering the advice of the “Poet” was metaphorical, I searched inward via Buddhist mysticism, solitude, veganism—each method as fruitless as the last. But all the while I was searching, I was writing and reading poems like my life depended on it, just as it depends on sex and breathing.

...continue reading "Poetry U.S.A" at Cheek Teeth.