At the Flagstaff Fiber Fest, I arranged jewel-colored skeins of yarn tightly next to each other. Was I expecting a sellout? Not anymore. After tending booth at the biggies: the Wild and Wooly Yarn Fest, the Maine Fiber Frolic, the Black Sheep Gathering, etc., etc., etc., my inventory remained overflowing like detainees huddled in Mylar blankets.
I hadn’t pivoted to cotton like so many. In February, when the red light/green light tariff game began, I remained true to my brand. I naively dreamt of continued abundance. My business had thrived during Covid. Surely, forced out federal workers would need something to fill their time and would welcome fibers pleasing to the touch.
In spring, I bought dyes from China: the blues (pigeon, royal, indigo); the reds (carnation, jasper, ruby); the yellows (downy chick, lemon, topaz).…
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She. Is a red
door framed
against the face
of a white house,
but i am the bitter
tongue of a scorned lover
desperate to shield what
remains of their pride and yet
She. Is the light
of a Christmas tree
at 2 AM when
the house slumbers,
but i am the third
strike at home plate
of the last at bat for a boy
too scared to swing and yet
She. Saves me
from a reality marked
by the perpetual echoing
of a premature goodbye,
but i condemn and fail
to moderate the timeliness
of a greeting offered
too late and yet…
– Nolan Adams…
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Upon the shores bathed by withdrawing breakers,
four sailors lay against the wooden beam
that anchored them above the raging stream
while their ship drowned, sieved by the whirling shakers.
The stranded crew is made up of a man
a lynx, a woman and a mandarin duck,
who after the due rest and rant against their luck,
their doom of sand scorched by the sun they scan,
wave after dreary wave of drought till they locate
the silver heaving of the spaceship’ dome,
announcing through their doom the hope for home.
With varied strides to pace their weary gait,
they reach the entrance of the ship to see
that someone must have broken in. Afraid
that something might be lurking in the shade,
they chose the lynx, well skilled in bravery,
to go in first and check if all is safe.…
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I grew up in a house of coded language.
For example, when Dad was home with Rudy and Splintz hanging out, and some other guy was there, too, sitting on our leather couch, Dad would say something like “I’m goin’ in the kitchen to make me a ham sandwich,” I knew that that meant something else.
We’re Jewish and he hates ham sandwiches.
He’d go into the kitchen, then Rudy and Splintz, hanging out by the doorway, Splintz with his everpresent cig between his lips, would walk toward the guy on the couch, say, “Let’s go for a little drive,” (Benny, that one time) just like in the movies only this wasn’t no movie– and would stand the guy up and lead him to the door, saying “Later, Twigs,” though my name was Robert, cause, at twelve, I was a skinny guy then, and that’s what they called me, before they shut the door and the guy they’d walked out I’d never see again.…
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“All death is suffocation,” Travis Gott overheard an ER nurse say as she strode briskly past his bed. He felt his heart rate rise. He’d been brought into this Lake Arrowhead hospital on an ambulance gurney not half an hour earlier. It was nearly midnight. A white plastic ID bracelet now encircled his left wrist like a small pale snake that’s swallowed its own tail. He wore on his right ring finger a black onyx class ring.
“Choking, strangulation, drowning,” Travis heard another unseen nurse say, “those work. What others?”
“Kidney failure, heart disease, they all ultimately result in pulmonary collapse,” answered the first nurse. “That’s how we die.” Travis’ breathing, already thready, quickened as he imagined his lungs – those pinkish-gray bellows – locking up forever.…
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I find a map and ignore Chicago,
you don’t exist, your warehouse
collapsed with you inside.
I can’t forget that you forgot.
I was 17,
running away,
reaching toward validation and adventure.
Just making a mess,
with open hands and a dead black heart,
pumping toxicity and fossil fuels through each vein.
I find a car on the side of the road,
take the 70 East until I can see smoke,
from the industrial plant
outside the airport.
The air smells like flight.…
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While students are confusing with their chatters
the classroom atmosphere as at the wooden desks
they take their seats before the lesson starts,
a bird glides through the open window,
swooping on th’ irridescent sunlight filtered by the trees
brimmed with the scent of the moon–budded dew,
and ushers in the glimmer of a halo
distilled upon the ripples of the sable beak
and pupils taking shape before the eyes
of one shy student, who, poised for the boredom
of the inevitable victory of time o’er dreaming,
reflects: ‘and yet the birds still pour
from branching shadows in the trees
their pure melodious gold to celebrate
th’ invisible refulgence of a light
that permeates the sky without restraints
even if my pensive moods can’t feel it.’…
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