Middle House Review
"One rocked himself to sleep every night,
banging his head against the wall. One
who'd been beaten for clogging the toilet,
took to shitting behind the garage. The
youngest one had night terrors."
The town killed
Safe as the Fourth of July,
as going home again.
Something to hide,
to listen to.
"Dragon's blood tree boughs stretch upwards
from a grove in the limestone plain, well within
view of red granite peaks whitened by lichen
and towering above snails, beetles, lizards,
and freshwater crabs, endemic denizens
of an archipelago isolated in space and time."
"I love writers like Anne Enright who convey the textures of ordinary life with a kind of magic that makes you feel every atom, and writers like Margaret Atwood (in books like The Year of the Flood) who make you feel what it might be like to inhabit a hypothetical future. These writers are in my head all the time. I try to live up to them as best I can."
"Sausalito houseboat sitting,
alone, waiting, chilled, abating
the foggy, groggy morning,
rocking on the deck of creaking
boards in a dilapidated chair,
fragments of a soggy, buttery
brioche chased back with yesterday’s
Blue Bottle latte"
"One more touch and I’m
up, stepping over dog toys, walking
with the hitch and stutter of age, with
the familiar tingle of nerves that spiders
its way down my arm, into my hand."