We killed this Jesus, and shook him, and these keys fell out.   This poem was originally published in Inch: Tiny Poems number 4 edited by Ross White. (available http://inch.bullcitypress.com/)

I get it all the time: you know who you look like? Scipio Africanus, the Roman general who finally defeated Hannibal and his elephants to close the Punic trouble.    It doesn’t bother me, usually, but I do tire of hearing the history bit.  Hannibal and the elephants! As if I could forget! This poem [...]

I thought about those green beans and onions all day after having rejected them for more orange chicken on my weekend trip to the mall. The regret eats me indelicately. How differently… Now I’ll blow around like street trees: pretty, but roots not deep enough to reach the good water. I rerun the movie of [...]

Two new poems of mine have just been published in this pretty new magazine published at Eastern Oregon University. They’re loose translations of the great Romantic Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi. I’ve included one of them, To His Heart below, so that those of you who read Italian can see what I’ve done with it. I [...]

Five if us lived in the backyard on was it Apollo street in Arizona? Made a cake one day, only not a real one because we were six and no stove. So, one from the things that made up our after-school world, like the cracked and drying mud of the thirsty desert and yellow- headed [...]

The new Rio Grande Review hits newsstands at good bookstores in good cities this week, featuring a new poem of mine–“Cool”– that leads off the issue. Special thanks to the editors for the pride of place, and for a fine journal.  You can visit them here, or “like” them here, whatever that means.

  Quiet now, but for camels’ tongues, lopping fat and sticky in the young desert night, big wind in the black backdrop of sky, crickets and their ancient legs, log-pops from my small fire.  Cool on my feet, this breeze after two days walking since the trees of my village waved their shaggy good-byes.  My [...]

 Quiet now, but for camels’ tongues,lopping fat and sticky in the youngdesert night, big wind in the black backdropof sky, crickets and their ancient legs, log-popsfrom my small fire.  Cool on my feet,this breeze after two days walking since the treesof my village waved their shaggy good-byes.  My wool socksstuffed in boots, I relax; put [...]