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

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 drink Pastis:?bananayellowshake with too much ice?melted by the Provençal sun.?It slows, idles us.??IV.?Coral weathered…

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 it moves on to the…

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 about a root cellar in…

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 – sign on grass,…

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. II. St. Malachy was named Abbot of Bangor in 1123. “That’s Ban-gor, not Banger, like banging someone,” my mother said as we drank Guinness in Groomsport.…

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