You lie in bed under the quilt from your son and his wife, and stare at the ceiling. It’s impossible to sleep while your roommate groans. You think the same thoughts every night.

ON BEING ASKED BY A MAN IN THE ALLEY BEHIND SUBWAY IF I WANNA FIGHT HIM

I say, well, I'll have to think about it. Like, I don't go to the gym as often as I should & my left hook needs some more muscle behind it. I tell him maybe. I say, it's presumable that we both have stomachs full of footlong meatball subs & should we wait about an hour before fighting?

First Flight

This time you are the bird
watching him fall.
Such curious feathers.

Funeral for a Good Friend

The pastor says we are sinners, all of us.

Shooting Pool

When those duck-tailed Harley greasers
rumbled up to the pool hall
I scratched the eight ball
and tossed my stick aside

My mother, nicknamed "Wild Mary K" by my friends, indeed went wild when she heard that a company with a history of polluting the lands, lakes, and rivers of its home bases, was about to do the same near the Shenandoah River. So "Wild Mary K" did what she did best. She rallied her friends. She talked to strangers. She got into some good trouble.

On the Roof

Where am I, Father? I found myself in a simple old Dutch boat, with sails white as clouds. The azurite sky met the smalted horizon, showing a boundless world, north, south, east, west. By mornings I would dance across the umber decks, spear a yellow fish or two, sing songs that only boatmen knew.

He stood in his hotel room, counting coins on the dresser next to his typewriter.

The sun slept under morning clouds, giving off a bluish light through the dark buildings of the city. A breeze broke through the open balcony doors—rotting flowers and garlic.

The sun sets on September eleventh—it has to.

Dusk is a sentient hour for Mansfield. We sit on pillows at the low table, finishing dinner. The construction workers are long gone . . .

My pincer-footed sister, Morgana, scatters food to our chickens in the kitchen garden out on the rugged farm, it being her turn again, and it being my turn to scan the horizon for regiments, and my sister is humming a well-known song that contains a rumor about the two of us….

As if tenderness were a given, give up.
Grow up or stay as young as inhumanly possible.
All at once I’m a 15-year-old-boy-scout-drop-out
and mee-maw I once met in a blue chair,
waiting by an entrance.

Most summer evenings around six, the normally quiet neighbor who meticulously mows his lawn, then returns at night with a flashlight…

In Dizzy Circle, we’d spend as long as our centers of balance would let us on our bicycles, one clockwise bike trailing the other, until we’d stop. The trick was to not let your speed shift, too fast or slow, to keep pace with the person ahead of you…

My 78-year-old mother breathes hard, curled on her left side in a darkened hospital room. Her eyes are closed. We sit in silence with her. After a lifetime of busy, now there’s only waiting. I reach out from my bedside chair and take her hands in mine.

When Lupe was a junior in high school her mother died from quick-moving cancer so she dropped out and smoked weed – then meth – in the confines of her empty inherited condo, frantically trying to numb her grief and loneliness.

I’m slouching at the bar when the devil walks in. The Moody Blues are playing on the jukebox, it’s the Circus Bar and the room is full of hookers and drug dealers and suburban kids

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

My dad read A.A. Milne’s poetry to me before bedtime from the cloth-bound copy his mother had read to him. One of our favorites was “The King’s Breakfast,”

One night we opened the door for Elijah
and he brought instantly to my nose
the rain-green wet, the brown-black-grey-
Pink-yellow wet of early spring. There is no red- 
wet--just red light in the eye as he enters the fire.