How the West Wins

A stone’s throw from Rendezvous Road
a cabin crouches into itself,
walls rolled in and ridgepole crushed.
But dust beneath the roof is dry—

most of the painstaken shakes remain
and upon them march endless ranks
of nails, like iron-capped cadets.
Some stand taller than their mates—

but not a one is still tamped flush.
Each passing seasonal exchange—
of freeze and thaw; freeze, and thaw—
has prised that martial infantry

a fraction more from foxed holes
until all verge upon collapse.
Which early settler drove them home?
Prospector Henry Jackson Rizeor?

His son-in-law, Harmon Lewis?
The land worked them, too, slowly out.
All they left was names on maps—
holes that tell where nails one stood.

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Connections

After ecologist Monica Gagliano

Six months she swam in the sea,
immersed in a school of fish.
The tiniest things, they would come
to study her as well.

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Pisces Betas

after Dan Brown

Tails flare out
and flash about
Fins aloft
are not so soft
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Watchmen at Midnight

After Night Watch, photograph by Jack McLeod

The fire lookout belches light
like the furnace stoked to consume
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
Say their names. Yes, say them.

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Email Exchange Upon a
Rescheduling of Rooms

after William Carlos Williams

i.

This is just to say
there will be no
plums in the kitchen

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What Makes My Clothes Fall Off

With no apologies to Joe Nichols’
“Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off”

Poems don’t stomp a country beat
To make you tap your booted feet
They aren’t equipped with catchy hooks
Adorned by cowboys’ flashy looks
Repeated ’til your brain-root rots—
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Frames of Reference

          The world of computers is
          governed by the hexadecimal,
          where the count of finger
          and toes is expressed as 1416.

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A Shell of a Life

for my Guinevere

The beach is littered
with a thousand shards

hints of pink and purple
wave upon wave of white

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Inconceivable

   It’s very simple dialectics. One through nine,
   no maybes, no supposes, no fractions.
   Dialectic logic is there’s only love and hate,
   you either love somebody or you hate them.
         ~The Photojournalist, Apocalypse Now!

I think he was thinking of dichotomous
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The Dingy Song

or, Meet Me in St. Diego

Ding ding ding rang the dinghy
Well, not really the dinghy
But the bell on the dinghy
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