Siren’s Sorrow

Dear sister, I understood your longing, for I felt it first. Lying on the sandbank, sea waves quietly tickling your fins, ears windswept for once. Music, carriages, voices, church bells rang in the early morning when the moon still bathed our scales. Baby sister, I enraptured you before the sailor's shadow. I only wanted your…

Absent the Circle of Life

Blowhole of a blue whale, flaccid after death, floats highest of the corpse, becoming island. Flora emerges from seeds dropped off albatross wings. Humans have no more use for them. "Uninhabited Tropical Island" photograph by Matthew Neighbour Written for a brevity contest - exactly 30 words.

Firecrack’d Fate

Eruption by cicada’s ear. Exoskeleton melting with no knowledge of heat, of flame, of burning…of gunpowder. Gold and violet lights fill ocelli, brighting out dim stars above and tree podomeres below. Does he believe the earth dies? A disorienting supernova. He falls as body dissolves. Brain’s final thought: Doomsday! Photo by Vlad Cheu021ban on Pexels.com…

Frail Spirit

She has been flailing in the ocean her entire life, yet some tsunamis she sails to fool the world that she is strong. She wishes she were upon stars that fall: meteorites splashing up salt in the stillness of silver night. If she could have even the destructive power of those asteroids that smash valleys…

Murmur the Horizon

Dirt smears the wrinkled cheeks of a Mothered woman. Sweat or infant’s piss drips from her brow as she steps off her stoop, arms full of a once-black blanket brown with dog hair and bleach. She gathers the corners and shakes, hard, once, twice; the third shows vigor of red lips no longer seen in…

Caldera

Across the sky Against the ground My spirit sighs, pants, pumps wings like those of a large bird too heavy to keep pace with smaller tits. Across the sky Against the ground Look up and see a phoenix burning bright defiance but the eruption that begat the firebird hollowed out the past. Across the sky…

Tomorrow!

The Soul Without a Summer is going live tomorrow on Amazon! I have completed a few last minute edits over the past week, including removing the last section I had entitled Dystopia. The poems in that section were specifically about climate change, and they always felt a bit incongruous when taking in the theme of…

A Woman Named Armada

Salvos of memories sail through her mind, each one its own galleon, sloop, barque, frigate forming a most daunting navy. Metal rubs against metal so that no man can see the surface of the sea for her might. Nostalgic sadness, nostalgic gladness — like flotsam turned to bombs shoved in cannons — erupt in battle…

Aspirations of Lamplight

Little flame flickers, licking the air. Afraid to lose its new life, it longs to linger, Made, it decides, to devour with devastating tongue. Partial to pure oxygen, it savors the Sylvan, Looking for tree leaves to flesh out its form. Initiator of warmth for night-bound humans, Greed and impatience urge its emergence. Hurried steps…