Manny chased comets. He was big into comets. He told women at the casino that he had stars in his blood. Continue reading
Huntington Signal Fire
For Brad
My brother and I knew our town was invisible
from the freeway. We were going to have to make
a signal fire. Continue reading
Roadkill Shoe (Intersection of Spencer and Maule)
For most of a week,
it lay in the crotch
of the same curve where
the man died, flung
from his scooter
head-first into the yellow
fire hydrant. Continue reading
The Corner of Calumet and Commonwealth
Detroit branch-sifted light
spreads on tufts of herbaceous
tousled lawn. Pink hydrangeas
nod; their blowzy blossoms thrust
through soot-blackened window frames. Continue reading
I’ll Do Something Drastic the Next Time We Meet
One summer, when I was in college, I planned a hike from Georgia to Virginia on the Appalachian Trail. It was going to be over 500 miles and take seven weeks.
I spent the last afternoons of classes doing calf-raises and squats in the hallway of my dorm, listening to Bob Dylan’s Hurricane on a boombox that could get pretty loud. Continue reading
Numbers Game
for Carson P Boyd III
On that uncertain Friday night
twenty-six years ago, I said,
“Why wait ‘til Monday? Pour the rest
down the drain and make
that call.” Continue reading
Train to Gainesville
It’s very hard to cut yourself on a moving train
without doing real damage. Continue reading
Driving Directions to the Illegal Owl Prowl at Elinor Klapp-Phipps Park to Which You Have Been Invited by the Guy Who Changed Your Oil This Morning
Nine
In a drainage ditch.
In a high school ballfield—before you make him go back, because you are afraid of some things, still. He says that after the next one you won’t be. But you are.
In the garage for a long time, where no one goes anymore. In the old chest freezer. You wonder at him going out there, long hours at night, but then again he could be someplace else, someplace far. You don’t know which is worse. Continue reading
Driving Through the Country
In a pasture
Along a country road
Stands the only memory
Of a house
A cold stone chimney,
The spirit gone up in smoke
Or crumbled. Continue reading
Blacktop Passages 