BLUEPEPPER

The Souls We Stand On If I had enough chalk. I’d give my mom wings but I was unsure if I could hold her hand and draw without breaking the l...

Burning Down* Close up on withering sunflower  Pull out to reveal a head stone  Her black eyeliner as clean and dark as twenty years ago  An...

Absence How many went missing? Most.  One way or another. We have talked  of that time but who wants to try and  imagine the reality? It liv...

Scam Avenue   Imagine going for a walk and encountering all the scammers who send you bogus email every day. Instead of reading about   your...

Death Call I missed it but my officemate said that was what the caller had said to give the call a name Not many people whose death would pr...

Praise the Insects Let me praise the dark red bird, nameless, obsessed praise the twilight and the off-hand evening light borrowed and tired...

  Wishes for English 101 Students - After Lucille Clifton's poem, "Wishes For Sons"                                           ...

Capture for my fortieth birthday Mom made me a photo book me and Dad mostly or was the intent so few shots to choose from certainly not enou...

some boys - after reading The Boys are turning into Men by Omar Musa the boys are Sundaying and RDO-ing with tinnies and stubbies testing th...

Speaking the Unspeakable two little boys took a ride on the sensor-triggered car park security gate it went up & up & up as programm...

Only Joking "It was just a joke” you said the night you came back, a typical wind-up that we should have known better to believe. Of co...

That After that he lost his sense of humor. It wasn't that nothing was funny. It was just that that wasn't funny. It was just that. ...

Lest We Forget.... Our friends ......

After Auschwitz “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” – Theodor Adorno I share the cold, windy beach with exactly one gull, and it ...

Survive by design Windows shatter upon impact. When diving across, and out the passenger side door, heart in my throat, chips bite into the ...

Undercover With help she trains them. Contacts made, details tended, she never drops her guard. At night, a barn far from town, her pit yelp...

Time capsule Little tin womb asleep beneath the forest floor  insides scrunched in scrolls, and paper slips like sycamores. cat-like  on you...

To my daughter At first we all shared in it Over an oval table Let it fill our homes to the brim and billow out the windows There was plenty...

On Your Dead Brother’s Birthday You will not go home.  You will walk your adult self through your adult neighborhood  and you will try not t...

Scarcity  Priced out of produce I turn to frozen, canned Boxes & bags  searching for less  Salt, long blocks of chemical lists  Nothing ...