You Be the Judge

after Helen Hunt Jackson’s “November”

This is the beguiling month when
autumn days betray my summer lusts,
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for Dawn Thompson

There is only one rule
of any real value
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Mrs. Butterworth stands on the windowsill
of the Christianson Ranch shack, whose door
stands agape with the hasp-screws rotted out.
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Forty years down our wilderness path,
neither I nor you recall the genesis.
All we know is our tweenaged selves
standing in shame before your holy father
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A poem maketh not the sun to rise,
    Obscureth not the wayward path at dusk—
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for Joshua Dodds

He speaks in a voice with eyes:
eyes that hear,
an ear that touches,
a hand that reaches around your heart
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Truth is necessarily loved in such a way that those who love something else—besides her—wish that other thing to be truth. Continue reading →

A man stands on oiled chipseal, camera in hand.
The highway undulates distantly, nearly straight,
as heat-shimmered dips lend the appearance
of road-fracture, shifted along a series of faults.
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In response to a Middle English facsimile of the Gospel of Luke

The minims of textualis crowd themselves,
ascenders aplenty but descenders few,
into Wycliffe’s words of Gabriel to Mary:
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