Dear Overcoat,

In you I become an old man,

a raven, someone’s

uncertain doom; in you I could carry

the Prince of November’s

one dozen pockets, home

to a pebble, a pen

and a knife,

you stretch me

taller,

you catch the wind,

you are a plowed field

for the first snow to fall,

you the fashion

I’d been

wanting

to hide myself within,

oh overcoat,

realm

of moths and mantle

of fog, the means

to mask my unsculpted

body—I found you in

a secondhand store,

I lost you

in a pile of coats

at a stranger’s

party, or did you melt

into some midnight

closet, where unexplained

breezes

or unseen hands

swing you

on a stern

and clanging

metal hanger?

The Death of Snow

I have a poem just published at elimae, a very cool literary journal. This is from a long series of 13 sentence poems, with the individual sentences collaged and collected and then altered from art journals and my own notebooks. Then the sentences are put into a room together to see if they have a conversation. It's a fiendish experiment.

Lots of other good stuff in this issue.  On a first reading I am particularly struck and pleased by this poem by Feng Chen, and this one by Jon Cone.

In other news, I am already looking forward to the death of snow.

Lately I keep noticing wrought iron benches

Oh you black iron
park bench empty
and waiting
for something beautiful as snow,

oh you black park bench
occupied
by sunlight
and the invisible

buttocks
of one hundred
grumbling
urban ghosts,

black
iron bench I
will scratch my name
on your arm

before the bus arrives
and takes me in
chains to
the castle of the day

First Snow

This morning as I was walking to the train the air was clear and sharp and I thought that the trees looked like they were ready for snow and the sky was close to giving the trees what they wanted. When it did begin to snow, the huge swirling flakes that make children open their mouths, and make everyone experience a sudden flashback to being a child, I was behind the counter at the bookstore, wrapping presents, and I only had one or two glances as the beautiful curtains of the snow flurry ran against the dark asphalt, and someone said, "it's snowing," that hopeful statement, tinged with wonder, that it's someones job to say every year.