a beautiful corpse...

which is to say-- a little bit of sound and fury, signifying nothing-- except, perhaps that it is very, *very* hot...

... I had an instructor once refer to this sort of poem as "a beautiful corpse"-- a pretty thing, without much life in it. And it's how I always think when I'm writing without a specific direction in mind. But sometimes you have to write a poem to figure out what you ought to be writing about...


Pressure Cooker.

Too many cherry tomatoes,
says my neighbor,
so I took some in to work.
Yeah. We're all sort of doing the green thing, now.

If it weren't so hot outside...

The sky is glowing white
and the dust on the asphalt
silvered.

You never walk alone here--
there's always the sun.

Sheeting through the windows
to set the tabletops ablaze
and kindle the carpets.

and the finger-prints on the glass door
throw rainbows onto the brick.

In the glare--
on the corner
every head is haloed
and every shadow's long.