Latest Works

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...

Last night I saw Jesus in the basilica  a face familiar but unlike  what art or statues show. Yet clear as day  a strong nose, parted...

She climbed into my mouth and   made a pocket, paper thin,  shallow as the envelope at the   back of your books I held her like an idol ...

Figured I had time left; Doesn’t everyone, it seems. Thought I could be deliberate. Consider options, at least. Then they gave me the...

The tent flap opens and it’s her mother. Draped in elegant blue fabrics, adorned in white gold and garnets, her steps are tight and quick...

The alphabet is not enough  to convey the complexity of a mind.  Rounded subtleties express ennui  where there should be evocations ...

̶  Jessica Nirvana Ram Like the Madonna in stained glass, I too allowed myself to be broken into blue fractals. I segmented my fingers...

I’m sorry for asking questions a mother isn’t made to answer —spirit or otherwise. So many times I addressed you, Why won’t you let me...

Ancient trees are a dying breed. They are a dying breed because they are steadily going out of existence, yes—but, more than that,...

First, dig a hole no deeper than memory, beneath stones that shudder through flames. Whisper its dirge or invite its misery, and press...

I found my brother’s body.  No one else thought to look.  To call him mangled would be  an understatement:  razors had lacerated the...