Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
That gobbling on the ridge:
turkey, or turkey hunter?
That whistle: factory or train?
I follow a vole’s progress
by watching where the grass trembles—
until a breeze springs up.
How the weasel must hate the wind!
And how it must strive to sound
exactly like it.
Dark-pulped when sweet,
prepared to stain your mouth—
Lift the membranes
crossing this moon-
shaped face and pull
the sections loose:
storm the little turret where
my half-blood tides reside.
In response to Via Negativa: Blood Moon.
Up early, and bated at Petersfield, in the room which the King lay in lately at his being there.
Here very merry, and played us and our wives at bowls. Then we set forth again, and so to Portsmouth, seeming to me to be a very pleasant and strong place; and we lay at the Red Lyon, where Haselrigge and Scott and Walton did hold their councill, when they were here, against Lambert and the Committee of Safety.
Several officers of the Yard came to see us to-night, and merry we were, but troubled to have no better lodgings.
A field in which
the king ate an owl—
old, amber.
Night bled,
no better lodging.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 1 May 1661.
A haze of jewelweed sprouts,
the dimpled embryonic leaves
like conjoined twins.
From the valley, the sound
of horses pulling a buggy
in their eight steel shoes.
The crooked sassafras—
something has found under its bark
a blood-colored door.
The hum of a generator
edging night.
Two houses down, a frat party
in progress.
Points of itchy heat, trapunto
of sand fly bites.
In the backyard, raccoons
foraging around garbage bins,
their snouts briefly lit
by fireflies.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
This morning, after order given to my workmen, my wife and I and Mr. Creed took coach, and in Fishstreet took up Mr. Hater and his wife, who through her mask seemed at first to be an old woman, but afterwards I found her to be a very pretty modest black woman.
We got a small bait at Leatherhead, and so to Godlyman, where we lay all night, and were very merry, having this day no other extraordinary rencontre, but my hat falling off my head at Newington into the water, by which it was spoiled, and I ashamed of it.
I am sorry that I am not at London, to be at Hide-parke to-morrow, among the great gallants and ladies, which will be very fine.
I give my fish
to a pretty woman
and lay my head in the water—
which spoiled it.
I am sorry that I am not at London
to hide among the ants.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 30 April 1661.
Fungi are like us—
absorbing oxygen, releasing CO2.
This puffball is an abandoned factory.
I nudge the intact wall
with the point of my umbrella.
It’s all out of smoke.
Ovenbirds and the black morel,
writes a friend.
Impossible to see.
Up and with my father towards my house, and by the way met with Lieut. Lambert, and with him to the Dolphin in Tower Street and drank our morning draught, he being much troubled about his being offered a fourth rate ship to be Lieutenant of her now he has been two years Lieutenant in a first rate.
So to the office, where it is determined that I should go to-morrow to Portsmouth.
So I went out of the office to Whitehall presently, and there spoke with Sir W. Pen and Sir George Carteret and had their advice as to my going, and so back again home, where I directed Mr. Hater what to do in order to our going to-morrow, and so back again by coach to Whitehall and there eat something in the buttery at my Lord’s with John Goods and Ned Osgood.
And so home again, and gave order to my workmen what to do in my absence.
At night to Sir W. Batten’s, and by his and Sir W. Pen’s persuasion I sent for my wife from my father’s, who came to us to Mrs. Turner’s, where we were all at a collacion to-night till twelve o’clock, there being a gentlewoman there that did play well and sang well to the Harpsicon, and very merry we were.
So home and to bed, where my wife had not lain a great while.
I bled red years in the mine.
I went out of the present, going back and back.
In my absence, the clock sang to my wife.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 29 April 1661.
his third grade teacher from years ago: diminutive
terror of the daily twenty-item spelling quiz, bespectacled,
hair pulled always into a severe chignon— How she parsed
sentences across three panels of chalkboard, lectured on
the solidity of nouns and verbs and the relative shiftiness
of adverbs. Therefore, when he reads the half-leafed-out lilac
seems to glow, achingly green against the brown woods,
his mind begins to revise: is it achingly, the half-leafed out lilac
seems to glow green, or is it the half-leafed out lilac seems
to glow a painful shade of green? He suspects that Miss Sifora Fang
would not approve. Likely, she would interrogate the very lilac
by the garden gate as to its blushing intentions, and certainly
the speaker as to why the sight of light striking the undersides
of leaves should stir a wound. Once, she sternly asked
the Buddha: Why are you crying? as he struggled to find
the right words for a difficult lesson. To be precise
does not necessitate complication, except that it is so
difficult to pluck the right thoughts from the always moving
branch, and find the words to flesh out what it is they mean.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
After all-night rain,
the forest floor is soft
and full of give.
A birch log collapses
when I step on it, but the bark
arches back after I pass.
New ferns uncoil,
heads slowly dissolving
into spine and ribs.