Haiku Reviews

In what moment will I appear
stupidest to my daughter, I wonder,

standing
in the end of the yard where

the jasmine smell doesn’t reach

When the dawn breaks
Is the pillow over your head
Or the phone in front of your face?

There you sit
at the edge of your bed
scanning cable for tits.
and on comes
Penn and Teller: Bullshit

Suitcases slept in the car

Kid didn’t sleep at all

First family drive at dawn

I took a long drive.

The first anniversary

of the last night you were alive.

Who keeps the zookeepers?

Have yet to divide

Still just reducing

The fraction

The most beautiful frames in film history:

– Bruce Campbell exeunt Darkman

– Patrick Ewing in The Exorcist 3

Bold of my therapist to expect change

when their waiting

room magazines remain the same

Could a pumpkin rind

protect a man?

I’ve seen that actor’s face

long enough

that I love them.

Inquiring unfinished lives want to know:

What contractor is gouging

and ghosting on god?

rise, accessorized in pug fur,

and summon the nearest cheese

this fury’s almost nourishing,

like olives ripening

over and over

Every bar I ever saw

you play is closed.

It’s a shame, I know.

It’s a shame I know.

I remember the kitchen

but not where we would’ve

kept our wine and spirits

You wouldn’t think there’d be

such a big difference between

Decembers 2022 and 2023.

Summer is a home invader

Florida can’t kill.

If this cold front doesn’t

hit us, I’m done

fucking for the year.

not being happy

makes me so

fucking angry

Swings, slides, and wind chimes.

Cross Main Street for a croissant

and to watch traffic.

In the field behind the honors college dorm,

the Stetson-wearing,

Black-and-Mild-smoking virgin

playing Travelling Willburys songs

on his mandolin

goes unnoticed.

Minnie Ripperton wrote “Loving You”

in the next neighborhood over

and shamefully, reader,

there is no shrine.

The hawks don’t seem

To mind the increase of bubble

Activity in our backyard

For years I mistook

Those squeaky ducks

For bats

if we had more friends,

we could pick more blueberries

the fêtes are full of frets

when all the guests could be hosts

On a hill in Jamaica Plain,

I saw a band I’d never see again.

And all the folks on that hill with me,

Just as likely I’ll never see.

I didn’t know how to

be in a skate park

Or watch a ska band

Until I closed my eyes to listen

And got made fun of

Been on the bench these beautiful days,

meaning not participating,

not on an actual bench,

which would be nice.

What’s being woven with

the cosmic cotton that appears to us

as clouds and dust?

I hope an oversized nightshirt,

baseball sleeves, big enough

for mankind’s knees.

I can remember, as I grew taller,

the feeling of my arms hugging higher

and higher up your back, eventually

over your shoulders, and now,

just over. I love you. I love you.

How long is the sky’s recovery

after lightning? Because it takes my

back a week to calm a spasm.

a week later, what’s

the closest I can hope for….

…maybe a hot air balloon…

to place me up amongst the last

carbon you exhaled…

and the next day,

no less dead

We stop to watch the dance studio’s

Revue under a tent

On the soccer field

Across from the church

Wiping my daughter’s stuffy nose

Is like reaching back in time

To wipe my own

Like old grapes on a new vine

Like new eyes on mashed potatoes

I wait in long lines for

overpriced theater wine,

but outside when we part, I’m

certain any second the show’ll start

the burden of freedom

is knowing we’ll have to

try swing dancing again

wander until your hips

horse me home at last

During the hurricane

We did our dancing

In a doorframe

There’s a fizz to the wine

though I know it’s flat.

My tongue’s usefulness cut in half.

How many years

of treading water

with white knuckles

in an ocean

with a bomb

in each wave

You tell me you named your daughter

Coraline because you love Tim Burton.

Your ego is bound for a very peculiar death.

Every day since 2020,

Distance and no guarantees.

Your breath is drifting up to me,

A Lazarus of normalcy.

We shush our dishwasher like librarians. In one of the infinite universes it may

wake the baby. And God forbid that

universe is ours.

Select the play-by-play announcers

of your life: Steve “Snapper” Jones

and a sandhill crane.

Facebook says my high-school crush is

born-again exhausted, meanwhile

I sleep in tongues

I’ll love you ’til
the red storm of Jupiter
is near enough to be named.

Between moss strands in

that finch nest is all that’s left

of the syllabus I assigned myself.

need a rest from trying

and failing

to rest

By the time you feel better

I’m a wreck in your wake

Trading hangovers like yawns

We no longer refer to our hugs

as trips to the gun show. Deferentially,

we now feed each other’s 24-inch pythons.

ashes to ashes, bit to bit —

can’t skip death like a

a hip-hop album skit

study the arc of that girl lifting off her

toboggan, put yourself between her and

a birch in a Rochester I could never visit

A fear so stupid, shared by so few, but

that casts such a long and deadly shadow —

as if, say, all the people who’s favorite

film is Farce of the Penguins had the right

to smother my children’s children’s children

and then pay senators to yell at me about it.

Phil Ochs, grab your gun.

Beware public funds for sports stadiums.

Been bouncing around

without walls somehow.

I want a pit.

I want it now.

our final text just rests

and my pulse takes the

momentum of a lake

Foot control minus will power,

I lurch from under the carwash dryer,

dewy from the cocoon.

wind was leaking from the trees

and salt was lifting off the seas

I bit into a decent peach

There’s only one friend’s

mom’s face I remember; the rest

dissolve like Crystal Light in tap water

none chose, some called

to divorce splinter from

thumb of daughter

Stroller stuck in the pasture,

baby’s first agrotourism.

I play WiiSports while you,

drive home in the snow,

waiting to dig you a parking spot.

Will all the snot I ever wiped

on my childhood sleeve reincarnate

as crust in my daughter’s eye?

I feel included like the many DIRECTV

and Bose technicians my dad

kept inviting over after installation.

Play-Doh picks up a patio

of pollen, so Youngest Cousin decamps

to play bartender.

Once, a house-sized gator peered

into my room with its window-sized eye,

and I got my dad to get his gun.

Fifteen minutes — one-fourth of

one billable hour. And the longest

I can stand without a look at you.

When I look at you — so many problems,

whereas my W-2 — so many commas

This year I made a lumber stack

and next I’ll make a lumber rack