Author Information
October Reading 2025
What Do You See
What’s your first feeling,
Not the first pictures you saw
but what's your first feeling?
Is it the kitchen and you're 3,
The margarine stick and the taste of butter
The thing you craved at 3,
No dairy, not allowed dairy,
so you ate the margarine,
Took slices off it
Cuz you craved the butter.
But what was your first thought,
Your first feeling,
The first vision
That grinds thru your mind
In 8 millimeter flicker,
In tiny photos
Black and white realities
Copies, and copies, with dates,
Or VHS
Taunting you now with static lines,
The realities of failed technology
Out-dated,
You didn’t back it up?
So, what do you see?
What does your mind eye feel?
The atrocities of your memory,
Not banal pictures of Santa encountered,
But the frying pan
On your mother’s temple?
What is your first memory.
Center of the Park
Centered within
The center of the park,
The planes fly overhead,
Sirens churn on neighboring streets,
Visitors chat in strides.
The bird's cadence, the bird’s shouts
Echo through the valley park,
He whistles deep, he whistles long,
A clear reverberation
Amongst the pines.
Who are you-who are you-who are you?
Leave-from-under-my-tree.
But I stay and I bathe in his echo
At this intersection
Of sound and breeze
Centered within
The center of the park.
The Last Time I Was Home
I read a novel
Instead of sitting next to my mute father
His voice taken by cancer.
Did I not want to think of his demise?
He wouldn’t die before I would see him again.
He wouldn’t do that.
A trashy novel, a paperback romance.
Why didn’t I go to the hospital
That night
To see my mother
I ignored her, my daughter
Sitting home alone while I was out,
I thought she’d rather be alone, or with friends,
Than to be with me, her mother.
Why would someone want
To be with me?
I didn’t think he’d die
I’d had a glass of wine
She had her friends
Why would anyone care
If I were there?
