whittling away her kiss curl in the casket
You carved one with a pocketknife
to be like that boy for whom, when he threw
his, time would stop, as though you knew
those were the best days of your life.
Your first attempts dived into the weeds,
though later it would stay aloft
before stalling and rotating softly
down like a painted maple seed.
sixth sherry...
auntie steps out
of her polka dot dress
The day you learned to throw oblique
to the wind, it clipped the path then soared
out in a perfect arc before
sailing away forever. Like
my best friend Ronnie’s grubby face
on that old bomb site, staring ahead
in disbelief as his severed leg
spun clean over the barbed-wire fence.
pink rubber bone
our old stray gives me
the look
His toy tin hat was set askew
with Jimmy Cagney nonchalance
as they placed him in the ambulance
but he never returned, and neither have you.
corkboard map
a cluster of pins
in the legend
is the author of Lessons for Tangueros (poetry), Marcel Malone
(novel), and Tick Tock (haibun collection). His haibun have been widely
published and anthologized, and in 2019 he was elected into the New Resonance
community of haiku poets. Originally from Wales, he now lives in Chicago, USA.
