Proofreader's Marks

Now I am in receipt of 62 pages of chicken scratch, brilliant interventions like ants on PDF scroll. Insert hair space. Begin new paragraph. Move right. Move left. It's a marching band of squiggles. But, really, I am grateful for the all-seeing eyes of a editor who knows too the music inside the lines, despite the marks of which there are many. He points out that it's the vases that never empty of water, not the roses. Although I must admit the image in my mind now of yellow roses with petals full of damp curiously conjures the springy touch of aloe vera broken from its home before you slice it open, releasing the balm to apply to a scrape.

I read the margin's menu carefully, a page at a time, remembering another language, that of the proofreader's marks.

From The Shape of Caught Water:
This morning the mourning dove's call, overridden
by far off traffic sounds, I walk the hallway with

fingertips on the walls, braille in surrender.

What will arrive next are concrete and hammers.

Taut wire to hold us together. Press down on the

tongue, and respect one another.

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Shameless Early Promotion

My poetry book, The Fiction of Stillness, is available for pre-order now on Barnes and Noble. Official release date August 1st, 2024. Here's a taste: ... The table is smooth and round symmetric The chairs are haphazardly placed at the end of this day I have breast cancer I say into the receiver [communities must] pool resources How to produce the sounds of the imaging report into sentences that resonate with months of postponement weighty contrast on my right side computing and comparing IM ratios for greater insight not sufficient to prove the efficacy of screening ...

Vessel

Inside I imagine puckered cups of butter cookies nested in paper that releases a sigh But instead there may be fiction within wishes never reciprocated Playbill of redundant arguments One black glove found fraying This vessel on an emptied table solo temptation is labeled with another’s name Guarded initials as if carved in melting snow A tool unsuited to the task of prying open Not yet valentine

Broken Bits and Mending Tape

S acred stones roll around on the floor of my car, carried in over years of scavenging. Pocketed. Parceled. Placed on dashboard or grave. Markers of present coloring past. The sun bathes the windshield just so and the secret messages written in mud or snow show themselves for the innocent blessing that they are. I walk into this side street café with my bruised heart in a purple and black satchel and am greeted by a circle of banjo players and one free seat against the window. Chairs like we inhabited in elementary school when things were still made of wood, grafted together at the corners with metal, corners rounded and smooth. We kept our notes in desks and lockers, wrote whispers of names we adored on the plain brown wrappers around our math books. Took broken bits and mending tape, carted cassette songs of guitar players who have since died or changed their names. Like mantras, directions to the river canyon where we could picture the rough rope as magical swi...

As Mourning Doves Persist

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