April via last May

Halt the habit
Here's how
Hang it up and
Hook your pit bull jaw—
Hold it fast—to the
Hatch. Then

Just ride away.

January

Wet scarf,
sucked into your mouth over and over

Men waddling,
Women waddling,
choosing each step carefully

Hat hair

Fingers wrinkled against the wheel,
solid and small,
dry and drawn,
close to death

Crunch and squeak,
boots and steam

Sunlight,
ice and salt

My July Post

He opened the matchbook and looked at the matches. They looked like an old man's teeth—evenly spaced, the last row kept carefully intact, with gaps between each. He tore off the end-most match and struck it, holding the head down to let the flame climb toward his thumb. As the smoke reached for his face he breathed out through his nose, hoping to avoid the acrid scent of burning sulfur. But his breath is short, and he never avoids the burn. (This time was no different.) When he could feel the heat, he flicked his wrist, pulling the match downward, extinguishing it. And there it was—the perfect smoke ring. It curled and writhed, twisting around itself in a sinewy circle, expanding but not breaking. His reaction was disproportionate, inappropriate even, but for that moment he experienced a rapture of a kind that only comes from the simple, yet unexpected.

Throwing the match away, he immediately tore off the next. He couldn't help himself—doing it right made him want to do it again. But he knew that twice in a row never happens.

Summer

Summer is here; the weather—when not downright muggy—is romantic. Romantic like open windows. Or because of the open windows, or something. Thursday I found out that I've been hired part-time at Trader Joe's (I told you I like to go to the grocery store). And to top it all off, I might have found a roommate for the fall when I move downtown.

So this is just a post to say my heart is a little swollen right now (that's a good thing). When things are going right I usually keep an eye out for the next series of disasters, but I definitely (DEFINITELY) revel in every minute of that rightness.

My Favorite H Words

Hubris, Hummus, Homicide, Hullabaloo, Huguenots, Hathaway, Halliday, Holysmokes, Hamtramck, Humdinger, Hoagie, Humphrey, Hairlip, Hopi, Harrumph, Hrududu, Hopscotch, Homebody, Hatchback, Hamstring, Hamhock, Hammock, Haversack

Extemporaneous Poetry

I write to solve

mysteries

I suppose, but what kind of

mysteries

are closed
behind those doors?

The doors of the mind, like the doors of the womb
the doors of your legs, the doors of a tomb

Are fast and firm and held shut tight
Like lock-and-key, no air, no light

June 20, 2007

This is a poem I wrote last summer. It's about a creek in the forest preserve near my house:

I took a walk through the forest
That fringes on each edge the blue-eyed city
(I say blue because it's summer
And cities like the windy turn doe-eyed
and soft-touched when the air is warm)

I heard a loon begin to call a deep,
throaty bull-frog's howl that Don
called a moose-sound and went on

I saw a mother with her ducks in a row
and a fish out of water; I saw the same
signpost twice in my circle-shaped confusion

I felt the reflection of the sky
the way I imagine Peter's centurion
felt the Holy Ghost, God bless him.

Sandals in the gravel make time-tables
foolish, but thrift a weighty responsibility
for Adam and his grown-up sons
Dean, Dennis, Darvin, Doug

Tell your fruit to wait until you
feel there is time