by McKenzie | Jul 8, 2013 | Reading
THE BASS He jumps up high against the night, rattling his gills and the hooks in his back. The Indian says he is like a goose passing in front of the moon. THE NOCTURNAL SHIPS OF THE PAST There was always a great darkness moving out like a...
by McKenzie | Jul 7, 2013 | Reading
GRIEF When grief comes to you as a purple gorilla you must count yourself lucky. You must offer her what’s left of your dinner, the book you were trying to finish you must put aside and make her a place to sit at the foot of your bed, her eyes moving from...
by McKenzie | Jul 7, 2013 | Blog, My Poems
The low, chuffing calls of deer in the bog are like a man grinding his teeth, steadily into the face of a megaphone. The call of birds. A conversation, the garble. The suction and pop of a leg pulling up from the bog’s thick mouth. Upon close examination,...
by McKenzie | Jul 7, 2013 | Blog, My Poems
One afternoon I mistook a young swan, dipping his head, for a large turtle rolling over and over—water, sun, water, sun—and the sadness returned. My stomach, seeming at a distance, filled. I wonder now if this is how a mother feels when she loses a...
by McKenzie | Jul 7, 2013 | Blog, My Poems
At the restaurant, the ceiling tiles were white and sagging, weak-in-the-knees, Casablanca lilies. This was a place that should have taken him back to his childhood. A place for burial, a cremation. They arrived with a variety of meats, d’oeuvres, all the way...
