Category Archives: Afternoon Poems
No More Bloomingdale’s Minnesota
In closing, some stand back in their standard poses, others have taken the fall into a pile of limbs and tiny torsos. All white-washed and naked and smoothed over and buckled under the expanse of gray carpet in an empty … Continue reading
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Curse of the Cult of Personality
A door-to-door salesman who sells doors, he can’t hang on a gate without walls or a fence to give it purpose. He swings on bars parallel to nothing anyone can see. But he does, and it’s hinged in brass. And … Continue reading
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Seen Through Fog
There’s a story behind Staten Island Ferry orange. I can’t tell it but can hear its tone revealed in a soothing voice- over through early morning fog. Routine commuting becomes heightened by the transcendent moments before the marathon begins on the … Continue reading
Of Unsalted Seas
A giant billboard boasts the intrinsic appeal of Duluth in winter. A woman paces back and forth beside a café table as she talks on her cell. I wouldn’t want to live in a cave or a cell or Duluth … Continue reading
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Overheard
Never been to Colorado. Don’t know if I ever will get over that desire to go East. With exceptions, a 10-mile strip of land on either bank of the Mississippi River is my invisible electric fence. A fuchsia corduroy overcoat … Continue reading
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Who Will Copyright Her Red Soles
Before she tells all in blog hell? Her mind drizzles dangerously on winter Sundays. Not frozen by ironic messages from a pregnant woman about saying “baby” out loud. Maybe it’s not about the nephew after all—Baby.
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Born Yesterday
Your big sister runs to meet you the way your second oldest aunt ran down the driveway to tell me the news when your father was born. Some chain link fences are mended overnight while we sleep. Some cynicism can … Continue reading
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Blanks
The public safety building skyway has nothing in its display case. No hint of what got abandoned, what could become enclosed in glass. She could start over. Wind her way through 7+ miles of second floor passageways. Could comment on … Continue reading
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Juror’s Requiem
Could be small drops of Eastern European blood in my veins—a Polish cynic leaning into the light. Could be the quiet I seek to escape into without a translator to jar me awake. A weekend’s worth of forgotten dreams and … Continue reading
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Glare
To panic about ice yet to form, comments yet to be made, technology yet to break down, a Coleridge poem printed and not read is to be most afraid of how serendipity dances across pavers— cracked or not.
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