BLUEPEPPER

Recipe for Confession Kneeling behind a latticed screen, Saturdays you used to confess a teenage fire beginning to flame your belly, tonguin...

After Normanville in baking January our skin sweats maraschino cherries traces of last year drip from creases of tired vocal folds a squawki...

Lincoln Laughed First Particularly memorable were his words to a young woman whose deep interest in a hospitalised soldier led her to press ...

I saw this bloke at the bus stop who  I saw this bloke at the bus stop who looked like Warren Oates. Collar-heavy shirt in powder blue, hair...

Winter Triptych I. Wind rushes the house,    growls around corners, doesn’t rest though night    has tumbled in. Lights blinking, we wait   ...

So Cliché  Our earth circled sun appeared  in the west this morning. Everything under it was old. - © Benjamin Fox 2022 Benjamin Fox is fift...

How to be funny  - for Michelle  I can't help it – I say things  that are needlessly,  thoughtlessly cruel. I'm sometimes  a snob, a...

The Propriety of Balance  I am noble bird with self-  made wings, stitched to a consciousness  I cannot describe.  Together we are  godly, g...

Witchy Halloween (2) Inside this late October 31st night, this poem turns into a pumpkin. Animation, something has gone devilishly wrong wit...

Sciatica Suddenly at 67 an alternating current swept my leg with pain perhaps a prelude to a walking stick a twisted cane. Am I in a new ...

Green Turtles Resentment is a tuna fish sandwich. A peanut butter and jelly on whole wheat. The garden-fraught-with-discontent-by- the-river...

Speech Wind only sounds when there is something  to sound against. What I meant when I said in the thistle patch catching fireflies: there’s...

Sacrament and Ablution To say retreat would be too trite. I lay myself down in the tiled hollow of this kitchen, birthplace to so many thoug...

Dream from the Edge I Not so long ago, border  collies of Maneotis herded  sheep along this road.  Now the pine fences have fallen, broken  ...

Bird Dreams I’m not alone, no  I seek my birdness  as the crows observe  where I was looking  but I’m learning  what it is to want  to cry f...

 Summer Sleepover Fun!   We arrive with our pillows packed and our mother’s kisses still clinging to our forehead. It's our first night ...

Visit Nagasaki * The Portuguese were first. We traded silks for copper and silver. Their preachers roused peasants. We crushed the rebellion...

Shalamov His feast of stories about gulag prisoners (who rarely got enough bread to eat) now savoured by picky readers who can overload thei...

Choice Over Life I saw a picture of myself as a child Six years old, innocent Only a year or so before that first time I found myself in a c...

the language of this place this wide night    the weather moves around you like music    moments like this never announce themselves you hav...