Just Once I'd Like to Live Eternally
/In Sunday School today Miss Hooker said
that we've all got to die sometime and God
alone knows when and when it's time to go
Cosmetology
/It began when her arthritis struck a match beneath her knuckle
and her husband unscrewed her nail polish cap. Soon her
doddering hand could no longer land the brush on her nails.
the springsign of today is a lie
/the springsign of today is a lie
we will ourselves believe
this mountain ruse
of air & hope
My Wife Invites Her Ex-Boyfriend to Lunch
/She tells me Justin had good jokes,
good manners, was a card shark
and a militant Baptist. They broke up
because she always burst into giggles
The Street You Can't Uncross
/The last time you held my hand
to cross the road, I knew
you would never hold it again,
I’d have to go it alone.
Read MoreMany Years Ago We Parted From the Sunny Mountainside
/On the east side of I-
81, sunflowers are
jading, but still tall as me.
On the west side, three silos,
Bob Dylan in Concert at 77
/Some baby boomers doze in the dark hall;
others, grey or hairless, travel back,
flower children impatient for the sun to set.
Résistance
/A red balloon wafts
over a paddock of horses
near Haworth. It lifts
on bursts of air that reverse
Two Poems by Clayton Krollman
/The tower tells lies. In the tower, I go through rooms upon rooms of mostly velvet. The velvet is not always blue.
Read MoreAfter Rapture
/The clocks are stopped
still you know it’s time
to take down the leashes
and walk the whimpering dogs
Decompensated
/During the week we eloped, your eyes bulged
as shiny and sleepless as supermoons,
then you asked if I were dead, sounding doubtful
and agitated like everyone who meets me.
Attendance
/We could collapse it, the umbrella,
and not get wet. But we hold it aloft
between us so we can be close.
Made and Unmade
/Made and unmade,
we make stories and call them memories
make memories and call them identity,
make identity and call it dream,
Portrait of My Grandfather in Late-Stage Dementia
/& so how can the mind / so vast & intricate
one day forget where to bathe / or how to breathe
What Comes Easy
/becoming is easy enough for most of us to get at least part
of it right loving is easy compared to being loved
hating, too
