2022, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry, river life, the no-scape

no. 67

The slipstream stops, and
stepping back into time
it is just past 3 in the morning
Debussy on the radio

yes a radio, still
that stretched connection
between and not —

each shift a goodbye
each round up and down
one more
hello: there is

no hiding here.
This new Earth swallows us
then — what?

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2022, microfiction, Ohio River Valley Literature, prose

Troll

My adult daughter watches me pack my lunch. I’m on the second of my 2nd shift days. I’ve got two nights of 3rd coming up before the week starts over and I’m on Sunday 1st shift. I pack mixed nuts, an apple, a tuna packet, 2 packets of peanut butter crackers, some coconut water (for electrolytes).

“It looks like you’re packing snack food,” she says. There’s a touch– a SLIGHT touch — of reproach in her voice. It sounds like she gets these flashes of a half-feral father someday living in her attic or basement, some eloquent troll surviving on nuts, fruit, coffee, and peanut butter.

I defend myself by pointing out the tuna packet. She asks me “What do you eat it with?”

“A spoon.”

I really hope I’m eloquent.

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2021, everyday words, Ohio River Valley Literature, poetry

no. 12

I when very young gorged on time
gluttonous round child with crooked feet I

eyes not so big as my ambitions to grow up
be a new universe in which the sun would not burn out

and the good planets would never have to die
& here older I diet: an exorcism of obligation

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