Haiku Reviews

Soul stays with body, not like

moving out of your childhood home

or relocating the bar from midtown to downtown

hit the campaign hard

with a wife hot enough to

turn Florida blue

What’s now a lullaby I memorized

by screaming along in my first car

at an age you’re closer to than me.

The local noose-maker’s is now

a vape shop and the big-box noosery

is vacant. My readers get 10% off at

noosenow.com with discount code HAIKU.

Blueberry bush presents

the palette to which sea

and sky aspire

I learned no shelf space was safe,

growing up in

in the age of the CD box set

Probably, that layer of paint deep

in the walls of that apartment dining

room still clenches that strand of your hair

I didn’t drive to visit my relatives

In Montauk just to hear them wonder

How I could possibly live in Boca

No sleep, again

Blame it on your

irritable diaphragm

Midwinter,

and your first summer storm

cuts our walk short

before the house

with the cat we like

Finger-feed up to the wrist

Until you learn to return a kiss

Set the record

for rabbits spotted,

twenty-two point five

Glass on glass chimes when

I take out the trash.

The past is not the past.

Do we smell as good to death

when he strikes us down as a

chard stem split?

I’m a few barons

shy of an industry, so

no one minds my blight.

No clue about C.O.D.,

just that it wasn’t good enough to order

Elastic Plastic from the TV.

bent over the tub until the

Mr. Bubbles washcloth renders us

sore and immaculate

The ash tray, an heirloom,

draws half the aunts to the porch,

leaving the others with dishes.

it’s gotten away from us / I

dust the baseboard with a socked foot

I try to read your face, but it’s just a map of unattended neighborhood citrus

By my child’s third birthday,

I’ll be able to tell them with certainty

whether daylights savings makes it darker

earlier or later

at least at first.

German shepherd guards

the persimmon tree whose fruit

the owners seem oblivious of

We met in my Khaki Adonis phase,

and by Bootcut Botticelli,

you were gone.

No rest when you’re both

horse and rider, straw and breeze.

At least the new neighborhood mural

is shaping up to be less lame

than the one across town.

a gust of swallows swirls

above the plaza of muhly and scrub,

part thundercloud, part lung

bike past what was once a punk

house, a living room rumored to be

hosting a Lifetime reunion every weekend

forty soldiers trapped

in a cave and only Phlavius Josephus

knows how he silenced their colic

the fear that I spent more hours making

your mixtape than you’ll spend listening

is fucking with our parity

Rummy and ham hock;

bowed over picnic table spooning

sides of each other’s breath

Envelop me, autumn, and

Suck the ants through my floorboards

Back to the underworld

I didn’t crawl my way

out the gulf just to blow my

knee standing up

my mother tongue

reduced to “mangia”

sunlight to sugar to syrup

mom juices carrots

singing the same half of a

cowboy junkies chorus

Shell of a second

Beer at the fray of my jorts

Nodding and swaying

This blog is sponsored by

the Plymouth Dealers of America, who sell

the car the pilgrims discovered America for.

dude flirting at the

vape shop has his own standards

he thinks he’s nailing

jumpshot hits front rim

must have forgotten my legs

now I have to fetch

Hornet at the stone

table, more angry at my ears than

worried about its nest.

What’s so threatening to God

about me wanting to live forever?

I just have more love to give.

No stains on the sports page,

I take my coffee hoping for updates

to the blogs of my idols‘ middle age

At what point

did I start

dreaming in decimals

Nobody can think

like me. Not even my phone’s

auto-fill, that dumb duck.

Gulls about the cliff

casting shadows I thought were darker birds.

Gone on the same gust.

the only note of my dad’s

fashion I want to play is grabbing an 

unassuming cap on my way to get bagels

You know Alexa is racist when

she won’t even dig deep enough to

play Hendrix on her 60s rock channel

Relieved Proust never knew

the rufous sfumato at the heart of

the first U.S.-edition Rapidash card

so far between — like a squirrel

descending

a tree 

to burrow 

into

a mountain

Beetle over blade

Crow under cloud How did I once

spend my afternoons? 

I’ve been in fewer

hands than this used CD

in this harbor town

with the courage of a room;

traveled west breaking flowers;

mending laurel swords|

_{^{*words from “Bob Dylan’s Dream” and “Changing of the Guard” by Bob Dylan}}

we poured out of high school

into cars into homes back into cars

like sharks with only fungus to hunt

Kim Shattuck died tonight

and you want

your trophic integrity tested?

The old suspense of

ruler bent away from young

wrist spared not my mom

I’m a delicacy;

may God drown me in Armagnac

‘fore He barbecues me.

Co-pain. HR protect th’company

from you. Ache are from you.

our film’s two settings:

• shore of my backyard canal

• driveway, you reverse

alright make it quick

the mayor is breathing down

my ass on this one

On the walk back the

sky re-hues from salmon

to whale belly

you’re the smell of fresh yogurt cake I want to fold warm into ice cream

The fleas stormed our yard

and got caught in our leg hair.

Baby, peace is coming.

You arrived first at

double-digit sneaker size

and testified to us the grace of T-Macs.

though in Providence the pond was

still frozen, and I tread it ’til sunrise

when the train returned to Boston

dead giveaway proves

tips from omaha legend probably

prettiest woman in the world

Too hot for corduroy

but I must dress

like a 70s boy

Place is in boxes, so

I ash in the wok that

scrambled my eggs.

Back when Lucy,

enduring that first dark night of

predatorsound, cursed her ears

your stoned face framed

by my foggy rear windshield

the cop asks me what’s up with you

Something discouraged

the heron and shielded the

clam in the current.

Stuffed in a Burdines dressing room,

distresssed that my pants never seemed

to fall effortlessly, like a cartoon’s.

On balance, are more

voids closed than left open?

I hope we hug again.

sand pine lacks the

aroma of Fraser fir, plus it’s

got that trash accent.

the cat’s now suspicious

of folds in the blanket it’s

slept on since breakfast

Our love has been blessed

by the magic that tore the

Dakotas apart.

I’m chewing on

serviettes. I, the landlord

who can evict death.

incoming, cleats up

not so much a boy as

a cassowary