We are not unlike the Irishmen.We also wear long, woolly scarves.We also have girlfriends who mock our scarves and protest in colors when we say they are drunk.
Enough With the Miracles
I don’t seek themthey just fall outlike when that girlran through hereand her right breastpopped out of her shirtlike manna from heavenfor this grade-school boywho stayed up all nightbelieving in Christuntil the left oneappeared above his bedlike a rosy pupilogling him in the darknessmaking him swear notto waste his time prayingfor miracles anymore.
Frozen Gingko
Ice Magazine
The branches get heavy.The wires get heavy.They lavish themselveswith loosely hung belts of translucent sequinsand draping necklacesof drooping pearlsas they strut down winter's slick runway,bringing to groundthe century-old fadsof heated homesand cable tv.
Iben Browning’s Blues
The sound an airplane makes
is what it means to cut the sky with a knife.
Contrails are not clouds but sutures—
scars left behind, eventually fading,
no soil in blue.
Sadly, I have no more visions.
I foresaw neither Connecticut
falling into the ocean nor
the tremulous sinkhole it bred
in my second-floor apartment.
Pelted again with
the stones of incorrectness,
I’ve had to evacuate the state.
Keep the borscht cool.
See you in November.
To narrow wins,
to fat ones,
to pretenders.
To the factory shut down
then sent away. We
welcome you back
under different rules.
Everyone got drunk
when Congress worked together.
This time it’s different,
turn the page.
The Painted Russian
by R.L. Wisdom I went to a hookerwho charged me nothing.Presumably I knew her.This was on a shipof the Americans' persuasion,which once blew up aRussian ship for no reason.I remember you being upsetabout me sleepingwith the hooker (wholooked like Jessiefrom Saved by the Bell)—but not for the obvious reasons.That is why Isuspect the painted ladywas … Continue reading The Painted Russian
Beach Hymn
It’s right, it’s bright.
It’s brighter than
the light of the Lord out here…
At the shore there is no one
between me and the Lord, save
a thousand sleeping fish and
men hunting for hidden oil.
I walk along the coast, right
at the edge where tide rubs away
the land like an eraser, only
to pencil it back in twelve hours
later. I leave footprints in the
sand, shallow sculptures wrought
of endless shards of glass, whose
sides have been polished smooth
by the alabaster pull of the moon,
sucked clean of color by the glaring
sun. These footprints are my only
testament, proof that I’ve sought
communion with something bigger.
They alone would save me—
if not for the caustic waves, tricky as
atheist preachers, which keep on
washing my offering away.
When the wave feints into the shore
its body vanishes. But the
water remains, unchanged.
—Navarre, FL
Lightning Bug
All of this déjà vu I’ve got.
I’ll get it here or there
and grant to myself
its profundity. As if
gnostically through me
has come a signal for
some tragic event’s onset—
a terrorist bombing,
the death of a friend or a relative.
A glimpse of a past or future life.
It’s crazy.
I’ll look at the clock
and it’ll be 9:11 or 9:11
and I’ll think I’ve
somehow keyed into knowledge
that something bad
has happened, somewhere.
But then I think about
all the screwed-up
clocks throughout the world,
twenty-four time zones (at least),
the international date line, Indiana—
And, really, at any minute
of the day
any asshole
could be looking at his clock
and thinking the same thing.
Harvest Haiku
by R.L. Wisdom
Fliers go out and hopefully in
minds expand then collapse.
Material is gathered for the harvest.
Will it be a good season.
PetroArt
It's oil,not ink. Darn. We buried our pensand a thousand year laterthey exploded. Only thosewhose cars could readgot rich. The restwere leftselling scrapfrom online garages.
JBR.com 