We extrapolate darkness
as if somehow we can trace
a way past the next horizon
with the sun always setting
perpetually on the edge
of our small redemptions.
While no confession’s
enough to encompass
the ease of complicity,
there is no life without guilt,
no guilt without awareness:
the sparrow will always fall,
as once will we all in time
simultaneously with the sun.
(September 4, 2026)
by
I finished Cruelty/Killing Floor by Ai (that is her name, not Artificial Intelligence).
I have read poems of hers over the years in various anthologies. The first poem I read by her was “The Country Midwife: a Day” One of the first poems in Cruelty. It was assigned in the first creative writing class I took at UT with Kirk Heinzelman back in the fall of 1980. That poem, like all of the poems I have ever read by her, was a dramatic monolog. The speakers range from a midwife watching her patient bleed out, to a mortician’s 12 year old son about to act out a fantasy on the corpse of a prostitute. All of the poems have strong imagery, dazzling imagery…disturbing imagery. Ai does not spend a lot of time on nature, but instead she focuses on the darker side of the human condition. Ai is a stunning poet.
by
We sit in a dark room in an old hotel. Electricity still flickers and water still spurts, but only sporadically. Everyone keeps to their rooms. It is safer not to know, less arguments that way. If the glass was not so smudged with dirt, we could look out the window, but we probably would not out of fear. The desk does not take messages, not that anyone is calling. Rent is extracted, of course, for the bed each month on the third automatically. Except for the police, who don’t know what to do, the streets are empty. They wait impatiently, but police are uncomfortable waiting. They tap their truncheons on their dark boots and look with lust toward the hotel’s once elegant entrance.
(August 31, 2026)
by
I’ve told this story before—
with a different point,
a different ending,
a different resolution.
Most of my stories don’t end.
They trail off into the dark
of another day’s words,
some other recollection.
(August 29, 2026)
by
My ground’s unstable
as likely to shatter
like a crystal glass
across a stone floor
as it is to remain
fixed within its frame.
I hold out my hands
to solidify the air,
and balance on the rubble
like a tight rope walker
negotiates the empty space
across the rushing falls.
I am no magician;
my illusions fall.
The distractions fail.
I am my own mark
from which to measure
the final unsteady step.
(August 27, 2026)
