Lyrical Lament: A Poetry Blog

My peace gives birth to violence: cocooned in your small frame— a pink-cheeked cherub with flaxen hair and dimpled palms, a beloved...

Since youth you beamed golden son of light, with gilded heart tall and taciturn sage words glided from your sleek and silvered tongue...

Beware the critical mind, for it is a self-devouring beast. Like your trusted arrow, sharp and ruthless. A lifetime of spouting venom –...

silver at morning sun scarred, blue brown in midday violet grey at dusk pinecone-scattered beach footprints of geese in wet sand blanched...

The languid density of August damp polyester, coconut-oiled skin caked by loose, tawny sand we squat amid scattered popsicle sticks...

Des Plaines, Illinois, 1989: Visiting Dad An hour away, on the north side of Chicago, he lived in a foreign land Four or five times a...

After two more bites, you can have dessert. Finish you milk. Blueberries roll off the kitchen table, bouncing off the linoleum into dusty...

The mind sheds fragments of thought. Disjointed. Threads pulled from a fabric. Why can I never find the pencil chapstick that falls to...

After the poem by Lisel Mueller Among children, I was the golden one Among days, I was the dusk Among trees, I was the supple birch...

Lord, purify the foulness of our hearts We offer you our garbage thoughts and trash Throats of filth, soiled souls, our bitter parts Fat...

A colorless January morning. Walking into the office in my sweat pants, hair unkept, toting my son’s guinea pigs in their little blue...

I. I have loved you for generations my tears, rivulets carving your body’s mountains water seeping in slick caverns hollow inside, like...

We found you curled beneath the windowpane in the corner, between the brick and bush. Warm and not yet stiff, limp with dream and wet...

For Msgr. Joseph P. Lehman  Ave maris stella    we sang in the night  the night of the day  we learned of your death    Hail Mary, star...

I want to subtract myself from the world whittle myself down to bones and silence not a diminishment, exactly but a sloughing away a...

Feeble, sickly  late November sun glazes  midwestern bone bareness  severe skeletons of oak  the world cracked shut  opaque skies, broken...

"But, Mousie, thou art no thy-lane, In proving foresight may be vain; The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft agley, An' lea'e us...

It takes one word, one gesture a dove unloosed from your lips your palm to journey inches to cradle my aching fingers, trace my hips ...

Trees scald sharp skies blunt blue with the ruthless unbending straightness of their trunks Nothing churns the stomach like damp, twisted...

After George Santayana’s “Cape Cod” The lavender waves and the rose skyline Blur at morning’s birth, doused in foamy wine Where will the...