February 2025
Bio Note: My writing appears in over 60 literary reviews. and my two books of poems, Lyrical Years (2023, Kelsay) and What I Meant to Say Was... (2023 Impspired) and graphic memoir My Life in Fish: One Scientist’s Journey (2023, Impspired) are all available on Amazon.
Pop-up Thundershowers
Some afternoons, sometime after two,
they swan in on crashing cymbals,
light ricocheting off polished brass,
gusts that push like the eighth grade
bully stuck too far back in line.
July in Georgia, and the heat
surfs a wave of weighted
oxygen — humidity intense
as dewy thighs, coercing me
to the sharp edge of submission.
Then, release, as if the sky
opened her refrigerator
door, and effortlessly spilled
lakes of cool liquid down upon
us — bright tears of absolution.
September should come quicker
than it does.
Levitation
When I was eight, a circus magician levitated
a gold-spangled, bathing beauty exactly two
hand spans above a draped green platform. Oooooh,
aaaaah. I couldn’t quite grasp why hips and breasts
drew my kid-blue eyes, as if a lodestone
for the magnetic pole of all moist urges.
Trick — everyone knew, but their mouths —
open circles — said no one really cared. And isn’t
that how the world now spins, belief displacing
logic and observation. Still, I wonder how
all may be levitated, not much,
just a hand span or two: a bit more food,
new clothes for the kids, a partner's
soft lips?
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