‘The Flavor of Grief’

I have been getting familiar lately with the flavor of grief. It comes on me with no warning. While driving up-river, to shelter-in-Nature. At 68 mph, passing a too-slow, white Chevy truck.

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Categories Poems

“Pills & Suits” & Patrick Morrisey

In an illustrated excerpt from Pulitzer-winner Eric Eyre's "DEATH IN MUD LICK," he describes WV Attorney General's Patrick Morrisey's entanglement with one of the huge pharmaceutical companies that helped spawn the opioid crisis, and the devastation that continues to affect families.

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Categories News Video

‘Window No. 1’

One of my earliest, notable windows was in the basement bedroom I shared with 
brother Rick. It opened to the left, sliding open with a satisfying 'chonk!' Revealing the level grass of our backyard.

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Categories Essays Poems

A Dozen Ways to Look at Chicago, Illinois

I've always been intrigued by human beings whose lives are lived just below and sometimes at the level of the clouds. They surround us by the thousands, the tens of thousands. In blue rooms, staring at TVs in their skyboxes. Doing Downward Facing Dog, 2,000 feet above the sidewalk.

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Categories Essays Photography Poems

‘My Paragraph & I’

'I want my paragraph to strut, carved cane in hand, the Left Bank, like a proper boulevardier. I want my paragraph to wow you. leave you wanting more. To, if possible, make you gasp. To make you—prose willing—cry. And then, to laugh. And then to laugh at your crying ...'

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Categories Essays Poems

‘Body of Evidence’

'I'd no excuse not to grok the fact, or traffic in illusions of not growing old. Or denial of encroaching senescence. Or flipping the bird at Mister Death. It would halt nothing of my body's fade, of our decay. I was, perhaps, whistling past my future graveyard.'

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Categories Essays Poems Poetry

‘Nous Celeron’

'Don’t you, Nous Céleron,/wish to lay down your arms?/Enter the Ohio’s cool darkness,/or the Chinodahichetha!/Sounding out each syllable/as a Wyandotte/might utter them .../

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Categories Poems Poetry

‘The Pledge’

We must imagine/a better country, after/the orange man in/the white house. Tote/our losses & our/wounds. Revelations/about our neighbor’s/secret selves. The sign,/the flag, rippling in/the wind. That says—/'Off with your head’ ….

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Categories Poems

‘Fridays’

I mark out my life in the passage of a flood of Fridays, the signposts zooming by in Friday cat posts by a favorite blogger.

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Categories Essays Poems

‘Ms. Nature & Mr. Death’

So, my day, which when fortunate,/begins with coffee, cat, and dawn,/shifts at some point, to the deck, for some sitting beneath the same old sky,/only this time, eyes closed./Climbed up on the shore, out of thetumultuous stream of thought./I’ve yet to grasp the meaning/of your collaboration, Ms. Nature,/with your ally, Mr. Death.

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Categories Photography Poems Poetry

‘Overhead’

‘The clouds don’t care,’/ he said. Blowing a puff
/ of cigar smoke at me/ from across the porch.
/ I sent a pretty good
/ smoke ring back his way./ We were not
/ six feet apart, so could/ be killing each other, should
/ the virus hitch a ride upon 
our exhalations ...

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Categories Poems Poetry