After lunch on Sundays Later in life when my father was sick and coughing blood, we tied a hammock outside between two willows, heaved...

Letter to Miss McClurg I am sorry about being tardy With this thank you for excusing me From the last study hall each day So I could work...

My mother says she sees him She said, I see him outside in that area beyond the house. It must have been the yellow in her eyes. She has...

Eastern Bluebird and a Group of Bleeding Hearts Sheltering a Chrysalis When it was finally condemned, locked between crane jaws and torn...

Embracing the Rain Here in my 70th year, I’m seventeen once more, leaning on the back-door frame and watching summer rain. The same...

Concessions A blind woman and her boyfriend worked the concession stand next to our office, day in, day out, nine to five and sometimes...

A Room of My Own Just three bedrooms, four boys and a daughter, I, next chosen for a room of my own, watched cinder block walls hem in a...

Checkout Time Self-checkout scares me I might forget to put a can In the bag I look confused and slow In the pet aisle They have a new...

Triptych 1. TRIPLE EXPOSURE We come whirling down like lopsided angels, each of us a riddle on the family tree. All our Sunday faces are...

Georgiana, Alabama, 1998 A woman growing old chokes up at the mere thought of seeing the house her father built a half mile away from...

Making a film The moment mother comes in with the rest of the children we huddle at the centre of the room and wait for another shooting,...

Combustion I burn easily, he said. Even in a flood. It’s always the eyes that go first. Then the hair on the back of my hands. And before...

Poets, psychologists, novelists and such have written of the difficulty of "going back home." I have several times driven up old...

Layers Morning lies heavy on the mountains. A dark veil begins to lift, and I seek to lift my own layers of darkness, let light filter...

50 Words at a Time Whenever you smoke I know trouble is coming. The creases in your baggy pant legs are full of ash. Your hair spikes and...

The Bee Keeper’s Wife The clock strikes five and he goes to be with her, to watch how she moves, feel how she fusses mere inches from his...

Canopic Jar 35, an anthology in print, is now available. Copies can be purchased directly from Canopic (here) or through Amazon (here)....

Grief It was not the memory Of all those years he toiled In the fiery mills, feet numbed By the winter walks to work, Or that wall of...

Climber Frozen on a Look Rock Monolith Halfway up the rock she stops. A buzzard glides past. She curses her winglessness, right boot...

Dinner in the garden We preferred to have dinner in the garden, On a wicker table and chairs in the orchard Under the trees, to smile...