BLUEPEPPER

Elegy for that time we used to be innocent and buried our hamster in a large matchbox after feeding him crumbs of sponge cake mom had made f...

Suburbanites The slow accelerating grind   of a distant hoon, the singular drip   of a bathroom tap in the dark;   the atmosphere of a Sunda...

Her Email Says "How Are You?” In my thirties I kept getting things done, fixing the undone, more than a little done in.  I had a drive ...

Your Future Argued As Your Present Ends   Seeing you everyday I never noticed the deep, dark caves forming beneath your eyes. It was only as...

The Dead “The dead endure.”  - Nancy Morejon They are always going away They cross the street, go out of sight Step in a doorway’s shadow In...

The Last Ones They seemed easier to spot thirty years ago, or perhaps my eye was keener. The freaks, the misfits, true artists who wagered t...

  Natural The trees have leaves again, and they dance in the summer breeze better than I can, even though I have feet. Those trees probably ...

No Longer a Garden   The following year he decided not to tend the garden, for how might he watch the hummingbird hover to drink the pristin...

Cinders, Feathers - after Malcolm Glass Back then we had only pin feathers, but I believed hard in the fairy tale, that we could fly beyond ...

Ancient tenderness She keeps her purest words Framed between the utterance In poetry and the tension of Silence within language She hums a f...

on reasons to strike :: all fibers on fire a girl in denim bell-bottoms & tie-dye knits clicks size seven needles while her beau throws ...

Having Company is what it’s called when a family our family used to know pays a visit from out of town & stays the night. Food must be p...

Point-blank Our long shadows slid over the snow, legs dancing. The sun hit all the high notes. When I finally looked up, years had past. I w...

Hard Currency An escaped prisoner on a beach of jewels Suspects perfection in abundance is worthless So I look for the damaged and the misca...

January 1, 2019 - a fter Jericho Brown Life awkwardly packed in a wheeled suitcase. Unwritten letters wait for a new year. Written, yet ...

Appetite for Mulberries  Our guide, Hassan, hurried us off the Bus into the factory to initiate our tour “Turkish Silk Carpets from Start to...

For Better or Worse I fight for the covers all night. He tosses and turns, twists  the electric blanket around his body, unplugs it and free...

Love You can smell it in the folds of her hair or maybe in the steamy aroma of a street pretzel in New York City in the eighties. It might t...

Retrograde Like cratered Mercury ringed by mile-high mountains and wide depressions              you travel backwards three times each year,...

Anti Canto  1.  What is to be done  for the homeless mentally ill in our nation?  My opening thought  is the Loaves and Fishes Saturday lunc...