--I'VE LOOKED AND LOOKED, BUT THE REALITY IS THERE'S REALLY NO WAY OUT OF HERE


...Happy, happy Monday. It's a new start to your week.

It's a little early here, about 3:30 am. I've got a some insomnia, allergies doing their thing for a second day/night in a row.

Directly in front of me, above me, just a slight head tilt, is a bleach-white full moon. It seems supernaturally bright. There are a few cloudy spots in its center, like x-rays of a cancer patient. It seems so close, an hour's drive at best, as if I could yell and it would hear me and answer back.

I wonder if the moon is full where you are.

...I wrote this "Gentlemen" and this "I'm Not Supposed To Be Here And Neither Are You" for The L.E.S. Review and Thunderclap! Magazine, both print journals:


Gentlemen

The dressmakers woke early
anticipating a wedding or funeral.
Instead you rode into town
wearing your skin
and tresses atop a roan.
The fates are never predictable.
The future is a cliff of erosion.
Tomorrow will send us another messenger
temptress
and even though we’ve been warned
and scarred by the others,
we will still stare
and gasp,
say, “Oh my!”
offering our hands out of pure courtesy.



I’m Not Supposed to Be Here and Neither Are You


The light is weak, wan, thin. It streaks across your cheek like a blade, a scar, a gnarled finger. This frail radiance reminds me of me, of us. I reach out to you before it goes too dim, dark. You are chilly then crisp, cold. When we were younger we invented events like these for frightened fun but that was before Mother’s new man, the refrigerator, the dumpster with hairy forearms, the one that smells of tapioca and cilantro, venison and earthworms.
His footfalls are heavy on the floor above. He sounds impatient and hungry again.
“Hold my hand,” I say. “He’ll never find us here.”