On the Borderline
Ancient cartographers knew the danger of living on the edge: they warned of dragons beyond. Submerged, invisible, waiting for the unwary step, the bold enterprise, waiting
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Poetry
Poems shaped by the emotional register of experience—by place, memory, history, and the shifting edge of the sea.
Fire Breathing
Birds dropping out of the sky: burning, and dropping out of the sky. Stars gone, sun gone, nothing but thick darkness and fear: ghosts wander dangerously in the smoke.
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The Ninth Floor
They’d locked all the doors— To make sure there were no thefts. To make sure no one left their work. To make sure the union stayed out. To make sure they made the most money:
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Taliban Girl
Yesterday, she lost her voice (it had long been quieted, but they made it official: women cannot sing in the streets, in public, anywhere under the male gaze) because
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Confession
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one year since my last confession. One year since I could speak without sins on sins, death on death, pain and dark nights and bless me, Father.
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The Edge Is Not the End
And finally she went through a wall of fire. (I call her she, but in truth we are speaking of a tiny machine built by hand and conversing in archaic Assembly language; it's that fragility and strength which make me choose to see her as female.) Almost fifty years ago she traveled past the planetary giants she was tasked to document, sending home her tourist photos, her traveler’s impressions of foreign worlds. But she wasn’t finished…
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The Threshold of Night
Compline starts with stillness. Silence. Candlelight flickering. Shadows dancing on ancient talismans: wait for it—
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The Dead Wife Among the Fairies
A lighthouse keeper’s wife died, and in his grief he visited a witch who taught him to summon his wifefrom the Otherworld, snatching her back from the fairies. The trick worked, and thereafter every month on the full moon he summoned his dead wife to be with him again for that one night. No one, of course, asked the wife if she wished to return.
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When the Whales Leave
And I stand watching the sunset dipping gold and purple into the ocean and think about what it will be like when the whales leave—
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How to Survive a Tsunami
The best way to survive a tsunami is to not be where it happens. This can be harder than you might think. We’re attracted to the wild,
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The Time of the Fires
Plato insisted: no poets in the Republic. He feared the power they could assume, speaking of passions rather than rational order, of beauty and despair instead of virtuous behavior.
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A Consolation Prize
It was Rachel who said, I love Emily Post. She asked me to tell her when the big white book filled with intricate orders of service arrived at the bookshop. You read Emily Post? I asked her, waiting
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The Measure of Wealth
Wealthy property owners in my seaside town all love how quaint the houses are— then tear them down to make instead mansions with glass walls facing the sea. There is always construction here.
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Before Fascism Came to America
Before fascism came to America, I imagined lives lived surreptitiously, resistance fighters drinking harsh red wine in stone-flagged kitchens at night by flickering firelight;
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Sleeping in Moonlight
And now, with the darkness, the ghosts arrive. My mother, dead these many years, a shadow fluttering in the moonlight: on these endless nights it is her voice I hear. I try not to listen. I wander instead as disconnected as the ghosts themselves through empty echoing rooms in my mind.
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Unforgotten
I live now, in my late middle age, in a seaside town I’ve chosen because it is a place where I do not lock my door. This was not always the case.
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I Thought I Saw an Angel
I thought I saw an angel once, the air alive with the beating of ethereal wings whispers of a world yet to be born out of the dustbins and doubt of our own. Given by God, or astronomical event— it doesn’t matter: I saw hope. I saw
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Winter Storm Warning
I have been in too many cemeteries, read too many headstones, wept with too many grieving stone angels. You must understand: I’ve often thought of killing myself. It’s a long and honored tradition. I live in a place they call land’s end: I think a lot about the beyond. Beyond
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Looking Up My Ex on Google
I hear people look up their exes on Google. I have an ex, too: it’s the convent I once called my home. Then, the nuns were hundreds strong (not including those deployed
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What Migrants Leave Behind
They keep the objects collected in plastic bags. A museum of dead things, a compilation of objects used to sustain life where life is no longer. Forced to leave home, what do you decide to take? A comb, a jackknife, a religious medal A pen, a Boston Red Sox cap
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This Thing of Darkness
Ekartic poem written to reflect art from the permanent collection of the Cape Cod Museum of Art.
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