A Perfect Procession

It wasn’t until she died that she got to ride in the white carriage of her dreams, drawn by four fine, pale mares, cobblestone clopping in sombre sorority, festive mourners snaking behind, holding single blooms or balloons aloft in a trickle of still, bouncing palette pink and white, air thickening as steps went slack. A […]

Brood, Act IV, scene ii

When Will their parts Stretch Deepen Widen Sprout Test Tug Them Away From me Reassemble Themselves and Go?   — Published in Amsterdam Quarterly #43, Summer 2025

Omelet Nation

And a country slaps over on itself as the fatted pan heats, half bubbling half spitting its middle oozing, the diced and julienned facing off, transition quick as a fork stir, states of matter in spatula, liquid maybe to solid no as we flip and season, bits hissing where they fry, defy laws, molecules slowing […]

Working the Room

You’re not half the artist he is, his work hanging, as you well know, in world-ranked museums of modern art not to mention that gallery just off Madison and he’s recently been commissioned for a new design café, I could go on, but what’s the point. I could introduce you but it’s your responsibility to […]

Ocean Road

Some skincare people tried to bottle it once, the scent of that road to the beach, the essence of privilege breezing past toil, that heady combination of ocean, farmland, hyacinth and continually cut grass, hidden sweat, and when he spent half his privet trimming earnings to send a small bottle back to his little sister […]

Agamemnon, in Ontario

Would they come back to life a hundred times,  for you to do the same again… No God warned you to cover your tracks, pull that car and its booty out of the cold canal. Our smiles were too wide, necklines too low, father, to secure us a rung at a safe distance from your honour. […]

Shifting Gears

The accident has made of me your old bike, beloved &         only ride, gear shifts unsteady, occasional tension spoke requiring realignment, night lighting, bell clear as a         bell when pressed, but asymmetry ache where there should be two-by-two’s, forward momentum a muscle         memory, your face finding wind & its small delights, shifting into lower gear […]

Hidden Gifts

Claim this feather call, colloid of song. If cackle were caw or whistle a taunt; if strutting had a sound, if pleading a peep. Listen. Deconstruct the whir shaving the breeze: The hummingbird and her last trumpet flower. — Published in Amsterdam Quarterly, summer 2024 (fortieth issue), Vibration(s) theme

Cherry Picking at the Altar

Roughly translated, it means a smoke pot, burning red like gold. Then many ways to say greatness and forgiveness, witness as a goat is sacrificed in the bloodiest of detail, body parts and sacred drips.   And though I am riveted by the red gold, the smoke, my spirit stilled and inward, the goat gets […]

Essential

For those who take our midnight calls who cry who seek our voice in the dark who imagine who create who connect who listen who swab who run back into the fire for us who poke through rubble who turn off the lights in the lab Let us pray For those who scan and stack […]