Thursday, February 09, 2017



SPEED WASH
-- after Ron Padgett

Down here in the laundry room 
I lord over a tiny city
made of cleaning products.
For these base-colored buildings,
I am a tidy act of god 
calling forth natural disasters 
named Speed Wash
or Delicates.  I hope
you'll come home soon 
before an entire civilization,
a brief history, the epic song
of our two dirty lives
is cleaned to death. 

Thursday, February 02, 2017


What makes you cry?
A cold and lonely road at night,
or a dead possum, or
a vicious National Geographic
magazine paper cut?
Sometimes it seems like ice
on a highway will be the last word
in danger, but sometimes
it feels like a high school
heartbreak can wreck
harder than any car.
Long-fronded cactuses
sit in West Texas
like plants made of swords,
and hurtful words
hide even in churches,
but right now the worst
of the Great Plains
is what isn't there.