TO ARGILLITE, RETURNING   SURFACING BEHAVIOUR Just shy of Alaska, catamaraning the contested Dixon Entrance A-B Line somewhere south of Prince of Wales Island we’re waiting with whale-sized patience for the firm blue sea to split open, our Canadian cell phones buzzing with text links to American dialing codes and roaming fee warnings, a cormorant,...

WHAT WE DO “Today it's going to cost us twenty dollars” --Gary Soto Either rip off cereal box coupons, or don’t, make note of how much milk is left, think about trying another substitute—almond milk maybe—walk to bus stop and find a quarter in the weeds, shiny, like it might have just been dropped; on...

PROLOGUE from Second Growth, Creekstone Press 2014 we came for wilderness, bounding trail, rinds of trail slumping into streambed, river mud hugging our shoes, pulling ourselves deeper into the forest by its trunks we came – for the twinge of rain-aged bark in our hands, sunshade of fir, dogwood, aspen, birch mycelia flexing whispers between...

WELFARE SUITE I. an an afterschool special “olly olly oxen free,” I circled the snowy perimeter bushy play zone edges I hid for fear of finding out she let the kids beat on each other her youngest son was also a psychopath windmilled his skinny arms and children cowered under his temper but I wasn’t...

FROM HALF-LIFE, A POEM-LIKE THING   “every man is capable of showing his contempt for the cruelty and stupidity of the universe by making his own life a poem of incoherence and absurdity.” -Gabriel Brunt *                           *          ...

PIONEER 10   Its shadow’s been gone since lift-off but it took light disappearing before lonely seemed simply alone, or if not alone then deep in the lab of the not understood, the not taste-of-ourselves in its gold dust, the not soot-plumped sweat of our brows incandescent with plutonium.   Shed of silver, quick, small–...