The night is an exercise in harmony,
a lesson in primary colors:
Billy, ten, clutches a bottle of WKD blue,
rubs his fast-ruddying face.
When he lifts his arm for posterity, the salute
calls the flame to crawl down the torch,
to consume what little arm hair he has
before ...

I.
Barrage of right-handed hooks: Jesus Christ is Lord
over Greater Orlando paints diamond fence; tee-shirt
on man with bulge reads God is Good; top of tower,
a neon cross – God is Love intersects Christ is Savior
at the is; If the world gives you challenges, make it an
opportunity ...

I.
The Commemoration of St. Malachy falls on November 3,
so as not to conflict with the feast of All Souls.
A prophet, Malachy extirpated barbarism from the Church.

Slug Polaroid
?I.?On a walk through Killarney, I dodge wet loaves.?They would soon stick to sole:?husky bits of polka-dotted licorice,?black pudding gnocchi.??II.?I imagine plasmodial slime mold and black bear cubs?would spawn something like this glossy lump.??III.?At a house near Volx, we ...

A week ago, their buds held tight:
points poked from shells...

Paths puddled with still water,
grass shellacked, peristaltic
stretch of slugs to inch along...

We were sixteen when they evacuated the gymnasium
in the middle of the English exam (anonymous bomb
threat, year after Columbine). I was writing on Roethke –
not the poem we’d read in class and most everyone agreed
told the story of an abusive father and forgiving son,
but one ...