…I have two new pieces up, a poem, "Homecoming" at Cynic Online Magazine, and "Free" at 52/250 A Year of Flash. Both are also here under, "Words in Print."

…Fourteen musical Australians had been staying at my house for three days. They've gone now. Nice people, hip people, those Aussies. I think it would be fun to be Australian, although I've never been there, so maybe I wouldn't like it. I used to always want to live in Maine, too, until I visited and saw all the herds of moose and not much else. Seriously, there are fields of moose everywhere. You've got highways clogged with cars in LA, and in Maine you've got to watch your shoulder so it doesn't get sliced by a set of antlers.

...I'm thinking that romantics probably have their dreams dashed more often than other people, than realists. What do you think?

…In the car on the way back from soccer, my son and his friend were playing Dead Celebrities whereby two people take turns naming celebs that have either committed suicide or overdosed. It sounds macabre, and I probably seem like a bad dad for letting him do it in the first place, but if you'd been there you would have thought the answers were intersting. You would have.

…The new issue of Virtuous Mimicry came out and I have three poems in it. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a separate link for them, so I've printed them here:

Skyward

I kidnapped her lips and thin lies
before she could pout or spout.
There are times now
when the sky is a see-through sheet
and my mistakes glare like a surgical scar
or cement handprints.
We were both young once
but I was the only foolish one.

so she’s become a spinner of sins.
She offers her dusty cheek.
In the tub
she sings like a vulture with its crooked neck
and oily-black plumage.
She soars with other buzzards,
skyward,
higher than eagles,
waiting for prey to twitch and show themselves
as something edible.



Montana

Here they have bears and forestation
but I take the weedy path
where there is uncertain rustling on each side,
a scampering,
or conspiracy.
I try not to act scared.
I loosen my grip on your hand.
I watch the breeze tackle your hair.
I watch memories flicker in your eyes
and wonder if this is a place he might have taken you,
if he held your hand like this before going further.

When I start to run
you call after me.
But I am running because I love you
and I know when an orbit’s been completed.

You’ve shredded my chest worse than any angry bear.
Montana.
Montana. I fucking hate that place.


Halloween

My daughter undresses the bed in a frenzy
and brings out pillow cases with which to catch the hail.
Ten billion tiny white mints
pebble and pock
the roof and our
cheeks,
blind us as we lift our sacks heavenward for Halloween
like nature’s gladest pair of beggars.

Her new laughter rings out
with frozen fog coughs.
It’s been ten months fourteen days
and we are
just now walking a cold path by ourselves,
searching out a life without you.