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Rapture Basement

I used to be known for the humor of my music, the lightness of touch.

Rasam and Beans Curry

Every life is an imperfect continuation of another.

Reading Her Poetry

I was once a rider of mastodons, a waitress showing skin.

Reading His Poetry

Our crowns are made of dead hair and get swept out with the trash.

Reading His Poetry

All down my street the new fathers beat the kingness out of the kings.

Reading Rilke and Other Poems

The men here don’t know where to place me, call me exotic grail.

Ready

Her sly smile was a vicious remnant of her life before Real Life began.

Recycling History

The past is never done with. It begs to be fed, demands to be eaten.

Red Flag Warning

Pale dust clung to their skin like the lime he had thrown on the dead.

Redemption Song, Part Two

I floated in the tub, my head bobbing, until I felt slick as a seal.

Refinement

For a moment I had the delicious feeling of fitting in without even trying.

Rehearsals

She had learned that it was easy to get Sylvi to do things.

Resistible

The world is where we brace for a joke that’s about to be played on us.

Return and Other Poems

Descent jumps and jostles, nausea drops me back to the floodplain.

Reunion

She offered her face up for what should be a brotherly kiss.

Revision

She’d lifted the plot from a TV show she’d watched the night before.

Reykjavík the Beautiful

She looks in the mirror above the sink, and her image makes eye contact.

Ringworm and the Blue Madonna

Nothing was permanent, no friend I made, no math test I took.

Rise the Euphrates

Rise the Euphrates, my first novel, grew out of a feverish dream.

Road to Somewhere Else

Kenny Wade makes do with short-term schemes and part-time work.

Roanoke Rapids

I hear Tchaikovsky when I close my eyes and pretend I’m flying.

Rosemary

A wildness and all the ways I could never be classy enough for pearls.

Rounds

Brassy bullets fell against the floral comforter like little candies.

Rundown

Well, back home has really changed, you won’t get that same bammy.

Safety

Tomorrow I’ll be ratted out about the hunting, but I knew it’d be worth it.

Sagrada Familia

“Look in my eyes. Do I look like someone who has heard this story?”

Sambo, or: The Last of the Gibson Girls

1908. The puppet’s name is Sambo. Oh what a friendly boy he looks to be!

Satellites

The alert says Warning: Wild Exotic Animals Loose.

Savages

The new generation doesn’t play war, which is a shame; they text.

Say Something about Child’s Play

Like a bird with a broken wing I will smudge the line of the hopscotch.