Publications

God’s cruel joke

(2024)

The Third Miracle

[…]The post office had shut its doors finally with no fanfare. They had posted a sign in the window of its bright post-green shopfront with a final date of operations, but sure no one looks at the notices when they are rushing to post something. The day had come and gone. That day was yesterday.[…]

god’s cruel Joke

(2023)

In the wake of Børgman

[…] But after watching his entire filmography, stopping scenes and staring at stills for days at a time, moving frame by frame through the perfect grey scale, the world laid bare, every film, every frame; the Swedish actress Karen Østergaard’s face, in tears, in joy, in anguish; the rooms — barns, offices, farmhouses, boats run aground, all empty of extraneous objects, all filled with perfect light and shadow; and the fire, candle flames, oil lamps, boats and houses and churches all consumed — light so white, so clean and intense it seemed like the wall onto which I had projected these images would curl apart and lavish me with its cleansing flame; after that, it happened. […]

THE HONEST ULSTERMAN

(2022)

At the Threshing

for Liam Powell

What I recall is this: the field flushes

Rose with the shape of a body fallen

Then shoulder-lifted as after a match

Nearly in the lightness of triumph,

And wrongly we had thought the reaping done. […]

Somewhere a singularity is folding light into itself

I saw the devil once                  I was a child

and my soul was sworn to oaths I could not comprehend

I know I will see the devil again             as an old man

brewing coffee alone at the hour of the mourning star      in my brother’s home

I also know that at first I will not notice

him peering in through the kitchen window behind me               

I can predict                 however           that I will sense the warmth

and when I turn toward its embrace to gaze at the lightening sky

there will be a man standing at the window     impossibly tall 

waiting with expectancy for our eyes to meet

and they will

and I will run fists raised into the driveway ready to battle the

but by some small art of loss […]

The Kettle

Back here         in the briar patch

I have become

all quiet and useful

my hunger is ungone

            but it is lazy

I still dream of meat     

and am sorry

I have not written you

for sometime

Jim calls me out

during the day

His face is streaked with red now

and it is beautiful        in the snow-fog

It is raining 

The yard is peppered with others

            day-birds mostly

in the distance             vultures

sog the clouded air

and sleep in slow congress

in the leafless willow 

behind the grocery store

it is always Friday Jan 11

and a crescent moon sets

like a vulture

everytime I step outside to smoke

Exine

I was afever 

I woke to an elevator door's dambreak of blood

I woke to a man asphyxiating 

              goldenrod exine amidst the stars 

I gesture toward uncarved black stone 

Here in the future I suffer impostor syndrome 

                    fake my way through adulthood 

surprised to see my face in the mirror washing

grow in quietude        eyes unblinking 

taking in the world           the mineral fact of it

Five Stars (excerpt)

… I come home alone right. Maybe a little drunk. I turn on the TV and queue up my Netflix. And there it is, The Triumph Of The Will. You know, Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda piece.  We all had to watch it in high school right?  The film world’s probably greatest, structurally I mean, propaganda film. There are some epically shot scenes. The plane divinely descending through the clouds. The child edited into the parade footage, a toddler giving the infamous salute, only in reality shielding his eyes from the sun. Riefenstahl’s editing is impeccable. The blocking is perfect.  But I digress…

Another Summer Living on Cigarettes

It’s not even Memorial Day

and they are already talking apocalypse

it will change everything, the way

you eat   think   educate your children

I stockpile potable water

own a firearm

It’s like this every summer

Blight creeps up the coast

like a fever

drops fruit from the tree

The ashtray overfilled

Wood houses in Pennsylvania

rot in the swelter

A green sickness

flowers over everything