Latest Works

Afterwards, the sky was like a slab of sunless milk, and as the women wept, they sent the dead girl’s sister to fetch the cup. Underneath the cedars, daylight leaked into its rim. I know that you remember. Think: the digging of the grave, the scent of dirt and absence, the dead girl lying on her side, hands folded by her cheek, pointing toward the sea. The small enamel cup her sister lifted to the mourners’ mouths, to catch their anecdotes: the thin nectar of a life, poured f

(for Marion) "Too soon," she said, "too soon. You’ve come too soon." "I came at the appointed hour," said Death. "Am I to be blamed for the fact you lost track of the days and hours allotted you?" "Untrue," she said, "Untrue. Tell Time to check." "I made no promises," said Time. "Moments come and moments go and naught can stem their flow. She should have kept one eye on the clock." "I did," she said, "I did. Ask Marion." "I cannot lie," her daughter cried, "Mum was forever th

When I asked the monk what follows death, he struck the bell and asked who was listening. I said: the wind. He said: then let the wind answer. In the garden, a stone pretends to be nothing. The moss does not correct it. I dreamed I drowned in a river flowing upward. Fish passed through my chest without apology. Was I dead? Was I water? The river did not ask. At dawn, incense loosens into a shape that almost remembers being human. The bell rings again: this time inside my bon

I do not know when these visions will pass but please hold me, hold me, alas. -Marc di Sacerio (2013). Sanatorium Songs 46. I'm not ready to face the light I had too much to dream Last night -The Electric Prunes (1966). Thunder fades, so it must have an edge: a brontopause where another sound can be felt underfoot and the echo-clap can recede back into the waves of a storm. But if not, and the thunder travels forever, then the boundary of every storm will collide with the hel

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels… –  1 Corinthians 13:1 There should be a word for what we were. and maybe another for what we became. And I suppose there would have to be one to describe the becoming and, of course, our unbecoming. Maybe two to be safe. There were words we used every day, we might call them “everyday words,” but they were clearly the wrong words or if not wrong per se  then insufficient or inadequate but they were all we had. What does big mean

An eternity embraced by thorns, ending in absolution.   Eager brambles part  like a flowering red sea,  welcoming me to my exodus.   Among branches and leaves I am rooted. I dance among a wild tapestry of lilies and lavender  that I weave into a  lush cocoon. Cloaked in morning dew I bask in blissful germination in a liminal Eden. Ariel Warren is an emerging writer based out of the wet and dreamy landscape of the Pacific Northwest. She is a lifelong poet known for capturing t

The hills do not forget the weight of our footsteps. They breathe where drums once slept, beneath grass sharp as winter teeth. I was taught the dead stand just behind the visible: not ghosts, but listeners, their mouths full of smoke and prayer. At dawn, the elders said, the spirits test your shadow. If it will not answer the sun, you are already halfway gone. I saw a woman rise from red dust, her braids threaded with lightning. She carried a bowl of water that reflected no s

We rise, we coffee, begin the routine,  pricked with flashes, typically,  of the recent past.  There is a filter, that eliminates  the mundane, from the priceless - which become the cornerstones.  These moments, the poignant ones  steel an emotion, free an event from  extraneous clutter, brand themselves in the cerebellum. We are these memories. The eight-hour-thing over,  insomnia kicks in, the curse  starts the definer-reel rolling.  The worst and the best flare through the

You said you’d haunt the places that you knew. I guess a lot of people feel that way. When shapeless, all the more so. But this house Is so imbued with you-ness in its walls (That pale vanilla paper that you chose, Those drapes that hang like frosted falls of mocha), And in its drifts of dust your sugary whims, Your shade would be dispersed, reduced, confused With memories, nostalgia. So you’ve gone To somewhere more anonymous, yet safe. And I will find you (knowing that a wr

Genesis 1:27 – "So God created mankind in his own image,                               in the image of God, he created them;                               male and female he created them” This is how our history has been told in your book,  in the words of your saints and prophets, a matter we must never doubt of.   Forgive us for questioning, but where are the power and mastery we should display, which we have been looking for so long?    Where are the wisdom and clearness, 

The snake got me on the ankle. I was alone in the bush, so the implications were clear. It was a mamba. He struck more than once, but I only saw him slithering away. The two essentials when faced with a snake bite were car keys and a cell phone. That’s what my instructor always said, but cell phones are really just distractions, so I was one short. Half wasn’t bad. I grabbed my keys and trudged through the grass to the Land Cruiser. Another crucial element of the snakebite

— For Evan   G. Where will I go in tender sleep? Do the grasses call me back through soil and root, to meet myself before I was called my given name? Does the doorway of my mouth, left ajar, spill my nest of secrets, each strange and hidden symbol released into mother's knowing arms — the gentle rhizomic labyrinth just below?  Do the red-clay aqueducts of my veins become the silver-salt of river silt, savoring each delectable footprint of friends and lovers at play? My laught

Saturday, February 6, 2016 The day had barely begun, and exhaustion had already defeated me. I hadn’t slept more than two hours in a row in weeks. My brain felt disconnected from my body, as if I had to remind myself how to walk, to blink, to breathe. I shuffled into the nursery wearing a nightshirt crusted with dried breast milk and the new slippers Peter gave me for Christmas—open-toe slip-ons with great poufs of pink faux fur that make no damn sense in a Winnipeg winter. 

Give me the moon, I said. Wisp and drip it down between the clouds. Slide it across my back like a mantle of lilied oil. I have never bathed in moonlight. Never eaten fruit made pale by starlight, popped between my teeth by long-fingered lovers, repentant and returned from prodigal lands. Mind those tender sunned-peach hands. For the shadows beneath my breasts are sharp, as dark as the secret crescent of the waxing moon. Drink to me. Feast at the table of my planted feet. Set

He once said: I’ll be Juliet. The gorgeous party of fall was strained to the end. The lonesome star imbibed Blue Hawaiian moon,  fallen into the river’s delirious embrace.  to retaste tartness of insouciance, he'd never known, but -perhaps- upon Eden. In the pockets of his coat; helpless and sleepless pills, having a feverish fête.  "On one glorious night, finally, I shall depart,"  euphoric Juliet sighed. His dream; a seamless stream of midnight smokes,  a shower of transien

i laid down offerings  to a God  who does not speak only watches a witness  to my every  unanswered prayer;  a gaze i once mistook as mercy i learned to worship  the absence of sound,  and sought an offering  worthy of such silence hands cupped, not for blessings, but to gather the drip  of my tears this prayer at last had weight and in my palms i learned its language:  the slow dissolve  of salt on stone the tears weren’t mine anymore they were its holy water   so i wept  no

I am a slow, shaking old man, my skin isn’t hanging yet, but it looks like a crepe paper map of someplace like Oklahoma or Idaho. When younger and making acquaintances of learned people, I would ask them what they thought God was - only occasionally was this well received and never reversed. Everyone believes in God, you can count self-proclaimed atheists on one hand. I certainly didn’t want to be thought of as, not afraid to burn in hell, though I wasn’t Of course there’s Ei

When it’s all over, when naked birds with little teeth have drunk their last from the saucers of our hips, whittled thin by the rains of the dying world, will it matter what you did to me, what I did to you? We are now no more separate than  moonlight from sun. Intermingled hopelessly in the slow slough of decay. All our old deeds—whetted each on the other— we have done over to ourselves, passed them back and forth between us like wedding wine, many times, a doomed cat’s crad

This life of separateness may be compared to a dream, a phantasm, a bubble, a shadow, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning. — The...

He came to me, like an old friend. He came to me, like a lover. He came to me, looking for help. Three nights. Endless days. Somewhere...