OCCUPANTThe sad mailbox of my extreme youth, what did it ever deliver? The only...
A CRITICPick up your socks. Clean the house once in a while. Go to the dentist. ...
HISTORIANPiles and piles of books, boxes of documents, photographs, bones, shreds of clothes...
YOU WHO KNOWI was just enough bigger that I could wrestle you into the clean straw of the mow...
GRIFFY LAKEI spread my smooth water like a lap and caught the trees' faces where they fell...
A GAME
Well worn, stinking
of sweat and the barnyard,
those old shoes had their own
smile, gaping open,
wrinkles, and
strings like fingers crossing the eyes.
I remember my father laughing,
dead tired,
laughing while I shuffled those
shoes around the room--
they were loose and heavy
on my feet, they would not
be picked up,
they slipped free as water
from my ankles and grasping toes.