Hail Mary, full of grace, Her name was Mary, & she would have been beautiful: shimmering hair, pink bow lips. the Lord is with thee. He is not with me. There are times when the divine disappears, leaving us blind. Blessed art thou amongst women, I am cursed, or at least stranded in shadow, away from the rays of His radiance. and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. […]
Boy I never touched your skin, so in my mind it is scaly, pallid, dry with impending death. Your eyes couldn’t open, they tell me, but I know both were unbearably blue, the kind you see in a too- beautiful summer sky, like the day you left us. That I do remember: how the whole landscape was wrong– sunshine, chirping, full trees, gentle ripples on the water. You […]
He’s an indicator mineral, shares the riverbed with a golden girl. They carbon date, waltz, consummate, find strength in their clastic braid. His dull clay arms envelop her, shield her shine from prying eyes. But when they’re pulled apart, sifted for significance, she sinks to the bottom of the placer pan while he’s washed away, his silica spent, discarded, no longer capable of protecting her nuggets from the prospector’s assaying […]
The congregation sways, claps. The choir’s robes shimmer, golden waves of grace. Dazzling. Angkor Wat at high noon. And I’ve imagined such a moment my entire life. What it would be like to swim with this tide, to take part in its monumental flow. Twenty thousand leagues away from my norm, from my terra form as a jutting jetty. A lonely niplet of loam gasping for air beneath an avalanche […]
Craving the Gravure Relentless, her appetite for life in black and white. The way she devours Victorian images like doily-bordered chocolates, one after another, until every plate is cleaned. Even period woodblock stamps she licks to slivered ends, their ridges etching her tongue red and blue, a slick metaphor for the era’s purple prose and postcards of families cinched in their parlor best. The black-bulb view of virtue is […]
high jump a copperhead chase cows cross country carry a dead skunk down the grassy lane throw up at the finish lose another race with death to your grandmother’s house fumble the snap you got nothing hum baby hum throw your father a curve put your dukes up circle the room make a free throw the crowd goes wild Barry Basden lives […]
They Say You Finally Have to Forgive Everything My uniformed father’s smile resembles the Mona Lisa’s, as unknowable to me as ever, his cheeks rouged like some downtown whore’s by an assistant in the backroom of the All-American Studio 40-odd years ago. They say there may have been another woman and a child–my half-sister. Still over there somewhere. I’ve found out things, but never a hint about them. I take […]
Her earlier visions of happiness were Far different from the reality Of that purgatory place she inhabits; Less than what she dreamed it would be In the infancy of her longed for independence. Her personal trailer park of abandoned aspirations Rusts alongside the books she never finished and The toys that sucked the family budget dry. All those years ago before she left in a frenzy Of hope and […]
My Parade I remember that Thanksgiving day winter-white dress, so short with its fur edging and ties with fur balls at the ends. I twirled them in tandem, waiting to watch the parade pass by from our apartment window. I remember my father’s conflicted face as he laughed at my finery while my mother lay still and silent in a darkened room, waiting for the pain to pass along […]
Awakening to Mourning “There’s nothing good about goodnight when it means goodbye.” ― Jeff Thomas Dad worked at the Atlantic-Richfield refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. On the morning of August 16th, 1963, when I was thirteen, he left for work before I awoke. I never saw him again, except in photographs and memories. Neither of us knew that last “good-night” was our last. There was an explosion at the […]
Melancholy Hyperbole 