We move together in mass
Like preteen girls at a concert

held at the mall, the day before
the outbreak Now that music

with no elevator, is drowned out
by the masses, whose feet (more…)

Broken urban desert, stale, parched
Dusted and frosted with collapsing automobiles
Skeletal juices crunch and ooze underfoot
All is dead (more…)

calliope whine
the clown’s greasepaint
smeared with blood
(more…)

This is Somalia, land of tradition

A cock crows
beginning the fast
from dawn to dusk
sins burned away
the living pray. (more…)

They say Winter doesn’t forgive

Gospel, true as the grave is cold

But it does forget

Eyes snow blind with hope, believing

The lies told with frozen breath

A blizzard of desperation (more…)

She knows the taste of nails,
a clutch of them in her mouth
like a dressmaker’s pins.
The flavor of iron is comforting,
something she can wield. (more…)

We first played this game as children
some three thousand miles south of here,
clattering out of screen porches
and down back steps onto cushioning grass.
Here my thick boots snap the snow like bone.
Freeze, somebody would yell, and we’d halt,
our traitorous hearts still pounding their drums.
There is no pulse on the tundra but mine.

(more…)

The cuckoo clock
has turned quite sinister
in the darkened parlour of
your ancestors, (more…)

Daylight was the first to flicker.
The air was subsequently thinned;
we gasped–each breath more
labored than the one before it. (more…)