I always passed that shop window on my way to work— my first job as a married mother of two. Earthenware at its finest: a decorative bowl wi...

I drive home from the casino, having almost broken even at blackjack, having overeaten at the buffet. The air conditioning blasts on high an...

Her last words spoken from the Tower: "The executioner is, I believe, very expert, and my neck is very slender." But not as slende...

          (The Fate of the Good Soldier Švejk) The road lengthens. Death never seems near enough. The wind points its cold finger at me, ack...

An incredibly thoughtful and kind poet recently asked how she could support me and/or Red Eft Review.  It made me feel seen and appreciated....

A gentle powdering of snow overnight, like talc on a baby’s bottom. Enough to show there are no footprints outside my door, or under my bed...

On a makeshift stage at the back of the bar, Mabel Starr and her band belted out the blues of their sharecropper forbears, infused with a mi...

You kneel in your camos beside a three-point buck, and grabbing the elegant head by the antlers, twist it with both hands into an unnatural ...

Eva buys a purple hydrangea from the vendor in the turquoise truck beside the poems-on-demand tent. She tells the poet behind the orange typ...

The ground we walk on in its solidity, what is it other than a place to exist? What is existence if it goes unnoticed— if we, walking the gr...

My mother named her Schnickelfritz, mischievous child. A gray tabby who hummed the world to sleep with her sweet purr. One of the pets who l...

Biscuit-colored fur his ribs show through, dark liquid eyes, Kai is gentle as a doe but plants his legs like stilts, looks sidelong when I t...

An antique mirror browned at the edges, now hangs in my entryway. It sees me, pauses, searching for my grandmother. Brought home after the b...

Late afternoon in summer, air so heavy I can’t move, rumbling in the east and a flash on the horizon. No birdsong— fledglings gone from the ...

Nearing the shore at twilight, she drifts in the wind’s current. The lagoon below is still as held breath. Her eyes skirt the trees, the mar...

There’s melancholy in picking the last of these heirlooms before first frost. The May potential of seedlings. Yellow blossoms, then tiny gre...

Tantalizing illusions designed to keep us toiling have dwindled to a tattered few. A local fishing trawler was only now coming into harbor w...

My eighth chapbook, heads held low , was published by Bottlecap Press yesterday and is now available for purchase on their website. See the ...

The trestle no longer shakes, rivet by rivet, as engines surge along loose, iron rails. The ties, coated with oozing pitch, have been replac...

My black, jade-eyed cat and I press our noses squarely against the coolness of the kitchen's screen window but for totally different rea...