January 2025
Bio Note: I live in Canada where I work in literacy and basic skills. My recent poetic work appears in places like New Verse News, The Red Fern Review, and Right Hand Pointing. My latest book is Caucus Country (Alien Budda Press, 2024). You can follow me on Substack @SandCounties.
Crow This Morning
There is a crow in the stubble this morning.
We eye one another.
She, he, they walk a field beyond the drive thru
coffee bar.
Their right to my left, my right to their left.
Who will laugh first? Who will fly-
The Clown
‘Isn’t it rich?’
-Stephen Sondheim
The paint is the moon
it lifts like lime
A face that always sees
The dolphin wanting
to feel Jupiter’s rings
Saturn’s frown
on a surface too still
for applause
But not his face.
The nose is loud
it sobs over the punchline
the door is a flower
whose water jet conceals
the colic of the joke.
Their car is a hearse
with bier for laughter
those shoes are too wise
to believe they can outrun
Pratfalls, tumbles
the curtain, of course.
To be the butt of everyone’s mirth
to gather balloons pelted with stones
I see in their faces
a terrible discipline
a terrific will
a chest so large not even
giant buttons could fasten
such witness within one great
Tent.
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