Before I drag myself into work every morning, I sit in my car in parking lots—the only public places left that don't come with a soundtrack--and read poetry. Currently, I'm into Merrill Gilfillan, Steve Scafidi, Tom Clark and Tom Hennen. My new book of poems is Appalachian Night. It is available from me at no cost: just email chineseplums@gmail.com. 
​

​To a Dog Who Sang the Blues When Left Alone at Days Inn


I never learned to lift 
the instruments of my ears 

to the trombone ease of love 
sliding in and out. 

Sometimes they don’t come back. 
Teach me how to howl. 

-First appeared in Prong and Posy



Learning David Bowie Died


in Vegas
floating through
the Death Star of the Tropicana

levers to pull
buttons to push
Major Tom I hear

planet Earth 
is blue
but that is just a rumor

-first appeared in Prong and Posy
 


On The Other Side


may I reach down 
into something 
like a raincoat and find something 
like a crimson maple leaf

         Father, may I 

search the other pockets 
before I toss the coat 
in the absence of 
nakedness or rain

-first appeared in Kaaterskill Basin Literary Journal



The Way I See It

​
I'm no Picasso but Roland Kirk's tenor sax 
on Goodbye Pork Pie Hat looks like the ragged stream of sadness
springing from a third divorce,
the meandering health of loved ones,
the body rusting at the hinges as the years complain,
the stream Aesychlus tells us 
pain trickles from, with a beauty Lester Young
would agree is blue.

-first appeared in Kaaterskill Basin Literary Journal



In Her Seventh Decade She


slumps against the Chevy
pulls deeply on a Newport
chases it with Pepsi 
outlasts a beautiful day

-first appeared in Kaaterskill Basin Literary Journal