Old Country

You across the table at witching hour
, planks warped between us
-- blue streaks and high chamber laughs
You turn your head every so often,
sip a drink and shake loose
your hair, coiled on an index finger --
And somehow we haven't changed
I feel you in the quiet
Foreign sweetness still in my mouth,
scent still hiding in my shirtsleeves

The Barn

Almost a place of nightmares
A setting for short fiction
-- We ascended to the hayloft,
stepped long up dusty stairs,
gripping a longhorn's skull
Far above the horse stalls and
shit shovels, past the chained-up
dogs and schoolhouse ruins
Where a boy could stomp a heavy heel
on sturdy woodplanks, lean, unchecked,
over ledges and dangle from rafters
Where the old world ran wild

We hung that skull on a nail
above the double doors
leading to sky and long-haired horizon
-- a sunbleached monument to ferocity
And danced some inspired barbaric dance
on haybales

to be
interrupted only by a stiff-necked
ghoul -- leftover villian from the
silent era -- flashlight to chin
groaning
creeping slow up the stairs

Poems in April

For the month of April, Br. Adair and myself composed some 30 poems based on Google image searches.


View the entire collection here.