“The Denby Sonnets”

[10]

Common sense to help out to think

of the work they do, the momentary

and mortal expression of beauty.

In spirit classic artists of the past

are present at a serious performance

and watch it with attention, affirming

the inner force c...

Yellow 

Some sort of goddess of some sort 

of season between summer and autumn.

Some bright heat through a dancing curtain 

onto our bed. An especially warm day in October. 

Not a muse—greater. A steady flow 

of song echoing from the wood-floored corr...

My Father Took Me Hunting 

because we had given up other ways to make music.
The white hummingbird of buckshot
is not melodic, but neither is silence.
What I recall I recall scarcely. Like a sostenuto
hanging so faint it may not be there at all,
I cou...

communion

in a 1940 photo my mother sports

a beret & snug pea-coat   

                           her face unlined 

& marvelous. 

                           she’s about to ligh...

"Nobody's Girl" by Sheila Black (Puerto del Sol 2005)

The Window

I don’t think about

it much anymore,

but when I do,

life is a souvenir

won at a carnival

that ends up in

a desk drawer,

like long nights

of drinking and

worse mornings of

regret and sickness,

it’s like waking up

in the middle of

the night with

an eyelash...

Grading Rubric

Trauma is weighted as follows:

Formal Essays (55-65%)

             Write “Children of Immigrants” – 10% (doubled if undocumented)

             Write “first generation” – 15%

...

Mirage drinking 

It is true there is only 

so much water you can

drink—but you can 

drink fantasy liquid

forever.

There is more than one way

to drink in a chimera

with her red-desert hair 

thrown to the wind, 

her body piled 

onto mesas of sand. 

Your body is no...

Essay: On Delacroix’s The Shipwreck of Don Juan

Delacroix, now that’s one bleak take on things. My dark perspective

            Has been criticized again and again; or, never mind me

Think of a writer like Charles D’Ambrosio in ...