BLUEPEPPER

Steeped in history The afternoon slumps --- habit calls for a cuppa. The mind craves something staunch to reboot as the coffee-fuelled resol...

Pidgin (speak white*)  Today I heard a young man speaking in tongues  from a televised platform  in the heart of downtown  Cameras rolled ba...

Relics ancient tors follow the coast, dark and gnomic, granite plugs peaks and mounds the hunched bulk of Tibrogargin Beerwah’s spike the Gl...

Nocturne No. 23 “My dreams should come to me like a lover comes to me,” she said to him. “They shouldn’t enter my room like an intruder,” sh...

Being Right So, we’ve arrived at the right answer, the committee chair intoned. And slammed his gavel on the worn sound block. And somewhere...

The return Some of the birds have come back – banded stilts, the eastern curlews, godwits, whimbrels –                                      ...

Self Translation How to translate myself? When I think of all the times my father chose not to use his tongue the words fail me. I wake to t...

Pickup Truck Father, Some nights I sneak into the garage to sit  in the passenger’s seat of your old pickup truck and dream of the highway o...

Decay    I bicycle past half empty strip malls  and worn-out fast food franchises  to the edge of the April prairie. The sun sets over the c...

Field Trip We visited the Lincoln Memorial,  the Washington Monument,  the National Air and Space Museum,  the National Museum of Natural Hi...

My Okinawan Interlocutor Speaks at Sunrise Every utterance dawns divine power; a vast ship sheathes into harbor as a dew sheds from a flower...

 Melbourne, the boil on the bottom of Australia  The newspaper editor in Sydney is unsure of the two Canadians who show up and suggest that ...

Tears Wrinkle the Leather Seats   Distracting myself  at the window of the hospital room, the alley below matches the bleak white walls wher...

Just what I need in plague season Dead crow on my fender parked here barely ten minutes  likely fell from that crab-apple’s wide  branches s...

Cues for Not Giving Up when the sun suddenly pierces through the hemlock, starts to paint each bark texture and time is on fire—every raindr...

Death eats our lands As small as i am: I've heard a poet saying " we all are  characters entertaining God" (sigh) & whenev...

Captured   My son has come into a tired world,  his mind sharp and fertile,   making each stone a new thing,  gifting the pebble that glints...

Poland It was April again. It rained every day floating seeds downstream. Cold white sheets covered cold white skin & you said it was us...

To Be, or . . . . It’s Not a Question Why did we ever buy the other story, the one in which we walk with heads held as high as deciding othe...

I'd Normally Sit Around & Chat I'd normally sit around & chat But today, I am too Tired to My mouth doesn't feel  Pregna...