Gloomiferous Pooms

Or I Give Myself Very Good Advice, But I Very Seldom Follow It. Echo lives in a basement apartment, walls softened with photos, posters...

Start with putting your ego on a longer leash; you can't let it go entirely--why write if not to tell yourself about yourself--but it...

The only mine I've ever known has been hard-fought, hard-won, all bloody knuckles and broken ribs, all set shoulders and subtle sneer--...

For my friend on the occasion of her wedding. What I know of mirrors is their imperfection, their imbalance of mathematics: one reflects...

For my friend on the occasion of his wedding. No eye for art, you said, and turned toward Hunger, livid color leaving you cold, neither...

It is not Death that watches us with suspicion, yet you invoke Her name anyway, make of Her a boundary, make of me an earthen intimacy....

Even untended, the grass only grows so high. Sunlight shows the gloomy drooping as it is, gilding mournful descent in unmet potential;...

I thought to call them faceted, the jagged edges of aspiration, and aren't they? One edge gives way to dozens, fractured glass casting...

I expected regret to rise like a bruise, black as a berry below kissed skin. What's left instead is yellow-edged, too sallow for...

The orangery takes on a different shape when you enter. Citrus branches stretch until birdsong fills the canopy, until dappling shadow...

Snow thawing brings disappointment, promises unfulfilled, hope's unattainable shape on the horizon.

We are alone in this room, the fire dimmed to embers. We are alone in every room, our flame bright as summer. We are walking home...

Meant as measurement, record written in rhythm, in unnamed graduation, strangely sexagesimal or fractional, spoken of in pairs with...

Yesterday, I was the dandelion, Outward scattering on indiscriminate wind, The pale, ragged death That begins many stories with one...

His back is to me, half-cast in shadow. Light lends depth, borrowed brilliance filtering through the window; we can't stay like this...

You weren't always so agile, light-boned and swift. Once, you stepped like stone was your kin, like you carried a mountain beneath your...

(incomplete, purpose served) She saw it before I did: stillness disguised as grief, how I held my tears, how freely they fell, as...

(incomplete, but worthwhile as is) You are not the tree sprung from the seed, but the forest in its entirety. Complexity in your canopy...

When has beauty ever come when called? My hands beg and beckon, but conjuration requires complexity, effort, the right shapes constructed...

Helpful Suggestions for the Infuriatingly Interesting i. Measure yourself against imagination. Take stock of all your short-comings....