From Mary Ruefle bot @ruefle_exe The morning rang with the razor-rip of saws and of cursing men, the crack of hardwood against concrete. She stood little chance against my neighbor’s aspirations for more patio furniture, less leaf fall, more light. Oh, I whispered No And she was gone.
From the News Today
thanks to Jennifer Senior –NYT Opinion Writer The Pathology of our national disease was a contagion of personality disorder from the git go: cadres of fevered, ghost-eyed, straight-lipped smilers, graze the floor, stiff-walk zombie zig zag party lines. One time, a yellow-haired bully in my back yard left dead birds on my bike seat I … Continue reading From the News Today
(day 6)Crucifixion -Hell Harp
As a boy I sat on the corner near the old town men with Lute and Lyre. Their sad songs filled my throat, and from my toes to my eyes I swam invisible waters rippling in space from the sound of fingertips on gutwire. Many a time I thought I could die there, in the … Continue reading (day 6)Crucifixion -Hell Harp
Night Shift at the Observatory
A bubbly stench murmurs the cryovolcano Say Al, you can almost hear that smell. All the way from Saturn? get real. Just go ahead and mash the buttons, Stuart, This gal is going off the clock in two hours. If you’d just turn on the radio, we might not be so bored, but put your … Continue reading Night Shift at the Observatory
Spider in the Blueberries
I pull berries from the shelf. Sleepy waves of guilt waft, as I notice too much plastic packaging stacking up in the fridge “and blueberries are supposed to help us remember” I think. The struggle to pry open the edges is real- my fingers are dull instruments this early in the morning and the berry … Continue reading Spider in the Blueberries
April 3 Word Play
I note a dryness to my cough Rejection of the stroganoff This unkind light, is harsh, fluorescent This atmosphere is dull, depressant The music on the stand is Liszt Unpracticed now for months-dismissed Instead, a strident radio The television’s blue-light glow We shouldn’t stay, we mustn’t linger Can’t help but flash a middle finger Another … Continue reading April 3 Word Play
Indiana 44
One maybe more maybe four on Indiana 44 you hunt for what rises -rusting in the fields Mark the miles that way to pass time Headed east you slow behind a hog truck then pass that shack at Flat Rock his rebel flag makes you rattle like quarry stone under the wheels her blue garden … Continue reading Indiana 44
Tidy the Restlessness
I am the need for order near the suffering of chaos: A rug aligned with our wood floor geometry Spoons in a drawer arranged just so A picture frame tipped right from its lazy tilt My house, a ship in rough seas resists these tiny nudges and birds still batter the windows and the bats … Continue reading Tidy the Restlessness
Grackle
Dark hordes descend iridescent armies alight after the seed I threw for more timid birds has barely hit ground before the storm rains in before our picnic crumbs are cleared before a bug can burrow below before the carrion cools yellow eyes on opportunity his beak is a bully her wing a shield they scan … Continue reading Grackle
April 18 Elegy for the Gregerson Barn
Water took the rafters drop by drop, the wind pressed from the west slanted the poplar beams inch by weathered inch. Swallows dipped and flew in and out of broken windows, foxes burrowed along the breezeway, pounced the shadow ghosts of Percy’s hogs, stirred up dung dust, mouldering grains, slanted loft light. Braced to … Continue reading April 18 Elegy for the Gregerson Barn
Early Morning Poems 