-
STATELESS
I suppose it is oddly fitting that I was born in the continental U.S. but can claim no state as home. I was a Federal child, and that meant nothing at all to me, a child who left town at two after a father’s death, a sister reclaimed by the government, which was no State,…
-
BROKEN BOW
This poem was recently published in the first issue of a new journal, Punt Volat. You can find it here: https://puntvolatlit.com/issues/winter-2019 Early this afternoon, a Kenworth semi pulling a 53-foot trailer rolled down Nebraska route 92 and entered the limits of Broken Bow. The importance of this event, while not yet obvious, will, I promise,…
-
BASHO, REDUX
This poem was recently published in the first issue of a new journal, Punt Volat. You can find it here: https://puntvolatlit.com/issues/winter-2019 If Basho were here today, in this America, at this time, stop briefly and consider what he might write, how he would describe the faces of parents mourning children gunned down in random urban…
-
VERITÉ
Only in a French movie does a girl stand on a bridge threatening to jump or not and weave a story that so draws us in that by the end, when the couple is together, she now pulling him from the same brink we almost forget that the movie was in a language neither of…
-
MORNING READING
You read the obituaries every day not only for the affirmation that you are not listed among them The key five words there are not only for the affirmation, particularly upon hearing the gentle man you liked, that you valued as a friend and craftsman is gone, but you didn’t say goodbye, that you thought…
-
THE SENTENCE
I was honored to have this poem recently published by Please See Me, 2019 Issue 3. You can see the original here (and other work by some fine writers: https://pleaseseeme.com/issue-3/poetry/the-sentence-louis-faber “Probable metastatic lesions secondary to breast cancer.” Complex words set at the bottom of a page, impenetrable jargon. Two spots where pelvis and spine are…
-
HANGING BY A THREAD
In Riga, my grandfather was a master tailor, the great and the rich would come to his shop some bringing bolts of fine cloth and others trusting him knowing that wools and silks were not beyond his reach. Even after they marked his home as that of the Jew, the Captain, who rode through the…
-
TODAY, ALAS
Too much of what passes for literature in these days is really no more lasting than the evanescent pixels from which it is created. Books fade, pages crumble to dust but that requires the passage of time that our electronic world avoids or simply refuses to acknowledge, for history is something that lives in storage,…
-
INSTRUCTIONS
Go into the hills an bring back logs, straight, peel the bark and smooth them satin fibers, the main pole at least eight arms the cross no less than six. Lash them well so they will not yield under the weight of the body where you might hang. Do not speak to the shepherd, he…
-
METASTASIS
She could barely move her head the cancer climbed her spine reaching upward, clutching vertebrae reaching out, tendrils grasping tearing fragile organs. She would cry, but that would be an admission of defeat, a welcome to death. I cried out for her, entreated our God for compassion that she might stand by her sons when…
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
an old writer and his words 