Category: Family
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Hugging the shore
What of this devotion this becoming a shoreline to the motion of a river rushing to sea. No one lives forever; is love a preparation for our dying? Tell me the truth. I watched my father die breathing into the night he would die, his pacemaker kept restarting him Mom called out his name wet…
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Hiding to be found
She ran away left a husband and two boys Said nothing, didn’t leave a note She called her parents’ house once asked to talk with her dad Her mother cussed her out and said don’t call again Her brother’s seen her a couple times she asked about her dad and sons She didn’t make her…
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Dreaming in My Daughter’s Upstairs Bedroom
Last night, I walked old streets once vibrant I stood looking in abandoned factory windows saw faces dripping sweat and laughter a Cadillac slowly turned the corner windows down, no one inside it turned down an alley and was gone I looked back and the street was remade with shops and row houses folks walked…
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Haze
What is it about acrid smoke haze at dusk that makes you think of sandlot football family suppers and warm thoughts? What is it about burning leaves sock hat and gloves stirring dry leaves into a fire before you go inside? What is it about smokey piles dotting the neighborhood flavoring air like fog off…
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Imagining My Northern Mother as a Southern Girl
tulip trees and camellias flash spring fashion reds and pinks and whites my mother would of loved April and May arriving in February I wonder what she would have decorated her yard with I imagine a magnolia yellow day lilies and something purple like grandpa’s irises that bloomed in May she would have grown vegetables…
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The Problem with the American male
Once upon a time, the American male sat up in the middle of the night and became woke and he reluctantly admitted to himself that all the gods and goddesses of Bullfinch’s Mythology aren’t real and he reluctantly admitted to himself that all of his boyhood fantasies are misogynistic nonsense and he knew man came…
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Traversing darkness while moving toward light
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by
I sat with a friend around a fire in our yard We talked of children, the craft of writing, of basketball an ideal job, a feral cat he gave a friend and the one he still feeds on his porch We talked of possums, guinea hens, ticks, raccoons and a hawk that swooped up a…
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for Mel
Overhead fractured sunlight through bare limbs Clouds race towards sun set The text said my sister’s husband fled with clouds at noon We say we are happy for him But for those that stay to rake dry leaves in memory piles it is a sad exercise and all we can do is let them rake…
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If
On cold winter days mom would send you out to play you would watch the birds shiver on phone lines and thought maybe they gathered local gossip through their feet Hardly anyone has a landline anymore birds now shiver on cable TV lines you wonder if they prefer ESPN the Cartoon Network or cable news…
