Photo Albums

Our ghosts are biding
in the photo albums of strangers.
We are background to life:
Douglas fir, canyon rail,
a concession stand,
your face or mine.
Somewhere I am holding a soda
staring off into the distance
while in the fore a beautiful man
is kissing a beautiful unknowable woman.

Job

It could be one cold interview at the end
And maybe that is why we get buried in suits
A gin and tonic and a sinner’s cigar
Dry-cleaning ticket taped to a security deposit

My uncle gave me Elvis, “now I’m dead, now I’m dead”
And I made an excuse for that rhythm
It could be one chair and a stern fatherly stare
At the end, or it could be sex with someone’s mother

Better list all your strengths and boyhood pranks
In the margins where a careful heart could see them
On the cover, dead center, an olive branch
And a decent guess of your worth

Between The Hours Of Cat & Bat

I.

blue-black wing thrashing
a thrush in the night

so my mammal goes unfed
the worm too far along by dawn

those subways of a vein
aflow with burning novels

the fruitivore in a field of nicked ears
who sees by screaming

in my sleeping eye
peaches bobbing on a river

and the raft of feathers
threaded dry through the rafters


II.

a pocketful of tokens for ferries
in a country I'll never get back to

gold hair spilling over the forearm
of the unwritten chapter

long thin bony arm
long dark empty night
thoughts flung far back into the lost

sunlight unexpected in the raindrops
spinning her back
the way the spinning top rebounded

I've been sick she said
crushed into a man attempting to hold
his planet in place with love

years and years hence the phrase
search forevermore
rings in the downy ears of a cat

heading to the window for entrance
and is tranced


III.

somnambulating in a blanket
a marionette in a coat of dust
never reaches the front door
but cocks ear to muffled birds
at dawn at the front window song

Windjammer 2.0

I spoke with my uncle again on Thursday night regarding the re-booting of Windjammer Press. We are talking about using blogging software to re-build the site. Going this route should allow us to get better exposure and more traffic. I'm looking to add a forum where contributors and visitors can start discussions, so it's not just a silent art gallery.

One thing he suggested, and I've been mulling over for a few days now, is finding a way to specialize the site a bit more, so that it's not classified generically as a poetry journal. Midwest poets? Online poets? Something like that--something more defined and thus more apt to come up in specific searches, where the competition to be the top link is less crowded. If anyone has a good thought about this, by all means, toss some phrases out there... I don't intend to drop anyone I've already got archived on the site, but looking ahead I may narrow the submission requirements a bit to fit a theme.

Anyhow, the actual re-launching of the site would probably not be occurring until later in the year, as this is really a side project for both my uncle and myself, and he has actual paying customers who need his talent and attention. But the literary magazine (or whatever it may become in this next iteration) is something both of us need to do, I think, for our own reasons. Because we're both artists at heart.

And that... is really cool.

I Have To Do Something

Windjammer Press needs to come back. Last year, I allowed one bitter message board moderator to convince me that the site didn't hold merit, that it wasn't doing anyone any favors. And while it's true that my site will more than likely never be a stepping stone to anyone's literary career--well, if you're only in it for the money then you're doing it wrong. Call me a Socialist, whatever. If I have to bill the site as a personally curated museum of wonders, then that will have to do the trick.

One thing it does need is a board of its own--some way for visitors and contributors to interact, discuss the writing showcased on the site. If I build it, maybe they will come.

I'm off to go see when my renewal is due; tonight I'll speak with my uncle about giving the pages a facelift (something he's expressed interest in already). Maybe if I can keep this boulder rolling I'll start feeling more like a poet again.

A Living Fossil

The danger is not in sudden change,
a fault blown wide, a bolt out of heaven.

It's the reptiles.
Moving so gradually one day to the next

you wake to ribbed walls, tongue-runner hallways
and the same sad view beyond a porthole.

If it never moves
you never think to run away.

Until the second skin fits so snug
you become watertight, you are become death.

They say if that mouth is pink
you're a goner.

The Birds of North America

How soon did the birds
learn to line our live wires
as if that were how things had always been done?

Privileged with endless linear distance
they arrange themselves so peacefully
our lights never flicker at all.