As He Has for Eighty Years, He Reads the Morning Paper


Then,
in silence and gray light
he works the the smudged ink
from his fingers, trying,
a ritual of faith
and survival, to
wash his hands, cold
water and deep sink,
of the crumpled world.





Drinking Behind the Bowling Alley, Canal Zone '74


It skitters like an armadillo when I am stuck in traffic 
or fingering divorce
paperwork, the feeling 

that I am still fifteen, 
waiting for the Cuna
Indian who ran the place to fill my fishing bucket 

with Schlitz, and praying for
facial hair and sex.
The PFC next to me is chafing in strange clothes.

Soon, warm rain. We are hunched in folding chairs, 
nearly fetal, hoping 
to finish being born.

-first appeared in Third Wednesday





Just Beyond the White House Protest


A Zen class meditating
in the grass, 
eyes closed.

Every now and then
after shouts of 
“Bombs!” or "Dead!" 

someone, ass to earth,  
with close attention,
lifts a lid.

-first appeared in Packingtown Review





What the Home Inspector Won't Find
 

First, the ghost of the seller's wife, 
who recently died. Burns. 
Second, the sadness festering, 
mold after rain. Third, and most vexing, 
the flaw in the master plan 
of this habitation wired for, 
crackling with pain.

-first appeared in Rubicon Press