Poetry

At times she puts away her age
as if vengeful for time’s waning

Doctors whisper,
“The Thorazine should stop her visions”

You were razors and acid and vinegar.
You were midnight and broken glass and storms and leaky roofs and creaky gates and abandoned dark roads
and steel boots and chainsaws…

We’re trap queens Ace
of Spade champagne flutes
ballet spins through
James Madison

The road to you
Is full of broken glass

The five sand dollars I found
I used for a down-payment
On a piece of ocean

I cut a hole for you to climb through

A little article I read somewhere said you were trying to get rid of me. Possible cause of cancer, it called me. Restrictive to healthy flow of toxin-flushing lymphatic fluids, it said. Well, that article didn’t have the story quite right. Surprise. I’m still here. I’m the support your mother can no longer give you. The phantom touch of your ghost child holding your heart. You think you can get rid of me? You think silly science chatter will silence me? You think wrong. My underwire bites like hell And like the gods in hell and above It holds all [Read more]

Sometimes the small stories fall into the cracks of my couch along with the crumbs and pens and unnamable, sticky objects fished out and quickly discarded. I’ve watched furtively as the potted cyclamen has slowly died on the back porch, callous to its suffering. The waxy pellet I threw away was the pain of every living thing. Sometimes the small stories aren’t small at all, they’re just unrecognizable in their current form. Outside, my neighbor is mowing his lawn. The tender grass won’t stop screaming. Richard King Perkins II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care facilities. He [Read more]

She scatters her scars over the water, praying the sea will take them away on the waves, leaving them to heal on some foreign shore. Dan lives quietly in Pontiac, Illinois, tending to home and garden. His poems have been published in The Writer’s Journal, PKA Advocate, Nomad’s Choir and many others. His work is also included in several anthologies. He has written off and on for a number of years and has written three chapbooks – Musing, Your Star and Other Poems and Random Tales.