BLUEPEPPER

Paddy Murphy's Wake   The priest had been there earlier and the rosary was said and relatives and friends in single file were offer...

I was back on the streets I pulled my cap down over my ears crossed the avenue into the bed of traffic zigzagged ...

Present Comfort   He stands in the open doorway, a brisk breeze caresses his face. There is a shadow cast fro...

1/3 burning bridges (i used to have a body once) the neighbors are celebrating. some wedding. or some death, it seem...

Lotus Gurgling sounds woke me — (perhaps I needed to pee?) —  the sink had filled with water abundant enough to spill  out on...

To some it is a literary masterpiece, cluttered and idiosyncratic as the city it chronicles. To others it is the world’s longest obitua...

KANSAS CITY My sister called to tell me that Martha had jumped from a hotel balcony in Kansas City. She left no...

Red Pants   She said that she kept the extra words in her mouth in case of an emergency. Silence only loves the gate which create...

Odysseys of an Onion Moon Last night, beneath the warm June window, she dreamt the moon was an onion,  wedded ...

Garden Birch in Winter Rain What should caress her white limbs with ice oozes winter betrayal to the ground and s...

Tasting the Perseids Space grit, comet debris, the daily rain of one hundred tons of meteoroids toasted to ash, charbroile...

Barn Raising At night, Father pacing around the barn beneath the moon, pitcher of gin in left hand; we couldn’t a...

Green Betrayal  You wish to be a Douglas fir Tall, straight, almost immortal But you stand like a Peking willow ...

Untitled Ages shift. Now, gowns of snow chill earth’s warm glow. It sifts, forbids, unnests; invokes a fear as q...

I Cannot Write Modern Stimulus is in the cheekbones of an arid zone, in vertebrae of mica that glint like fools g...

A Previous Life It was their wedding night and Priya didn’t want to tell her new husband all about it but Bill kept asking where she ha...

Along Union Deposit Road A cemetery blushes purple in Spring though word may have spread of a dalliance in Section 1...

Painter When I graduated high school I figured I’d spent enough time sitting at a desk I thought about ever...