Grandma's Painting

3/21/2026 (c)

Every summer, Grandma opens the closet  

under the stairwell— 

pulls out paintings she’d completed that year. 

 

Daddy grabs a beer— 

wanders off, the screen door banging  

like a mini tantrum.  

 

Momma casts a withering glare 

toward the void where Daddy was. 

 

Their wedding gift painting— 

hung it where the open front door 

could obscure it.   

 

When she lived with us, 

instead of contributing to expenses 

her savings paid for 

painting courses at the community center.  

 

Sometimes she practiced with crayons 

or pastel sticks at the kitchen table.  

 

Profiles— 

One of my brother,  

one of my sister.  

None of me. 

 

“I give up. I can’t capture you.”  

 

I stood there, 

obscured 

even without a door.  

 

Breaching

 3/20/2026 (c)

 

Aunt Beulah was so pleased Ronny came home alive.

For three summers he sat cross-legged in the front yard,

Pea-green jacket, smoking home-grown, laughing—

which was strange. No one did happy in our family.

 

He finally manned up, got some shit job in Seattle

scrubbing toilets and patching drywall.

 

Vietnam wasted Ronny, was all dad said, and once

Ronny is a waste.

 

I never heard if Ronny had killed, or crept

through underbrush in a scraggly formation

of camouflaged boys—

onslaught of torrential rain, shrapnel.

I never even asked if he had a nickname.

like Injun, or Tonasket.

 

Nam and eventually Ronny became two more topics

we did not breach at the dinner table.

Mealtime was silence and hate shoveled down

with slabs of beef broiled into charcoal pucks.

On a good day, Dad ranted about gold diggers,  

racially inferiors, that Management Prick.

It was not our place to join in, but to take it in.

 

At night Mom and Dad drank Jim Beam and fought,

their resentment worming through the oil duct into my room. 

By my teens it became all about me—my deliberate mediocrity,

the marijuana in my sock drawer, my slutty influence on my sister.

I was the source of all unhappiness in that house.

 

Boarding school—good money after bad.

They wanted instead to sign me up, ship me out,

slap a devil’s piano in my hand—

 

They hoped I’d die.

 

Because Ronny left it—

because his name, my name

patched above the heart, confirming me on a short list

of combat survivors, I slept in Ronny’s coat,

 

my bedroom a triage where I bandaged wounds

peppering my frail psyche.

 

When I reached the point of no return and little fight left

I undertook a three-month hunger strike—

a siege as inviolable to me as it was invisible to them.

 

And when my sister wanted Ronny’s coat, she took it

and I let her have it.

At The Comet

 1999 (c) 

After the art-house movie

God and I walked to the Comet for beer.

 

He leaned against the bar,

poured back an IPA

and ordered another.

 

“Christ, you read too much into it,” he said.

“Can’t you take anything at face value—

 just be entertained?”

 

I started to answer—

something about the director,

how his films used to mean something,

how big budgets had changed them—

 

but he was already looking past me

to his friends racking balls.

 

“Christ,” he said,

let’s shoot some pool.

God's Work

 1999 (c) revised significantly 3/19/2026

God’s Work

 

God rages and paces the construction company’s hall.

He hires any man with a pulse,
willing to work under-scale.

The drywaller shows up drunk,
if he shows up at all.
The electrician deals drugs from his van.

Carpenters hammer and hew,
lifting rafters off-keel.

In this heaven, it rains every day.
Every sunset flawed.

If you don’t praise God,
no paycheck. No one stays long.

It is all patch, re-patch,
temporary repair.

God damns the painter
who buys his own tools on God’s account.
Damns the plumber who sleeps on shift—
while pipes burst
and water floods the floor.

God stands back,
hands clean.

He couldn’t lay a tile,
fix a breaker,
plumb a line—

and still calls it his.

Grandma Louise

 3/18/2026 (c)

Grandma Louise used a cane,

turned sideways around furniture,

around baskets heaped

with air dried sheets

already gathering dust

smelling of lanolin.

 

Grandma Louise washed her hands

with baking soda and vinegar

below the kitchen window,

pausing to watch Grandpa

 mowing hay.

 

The youngest two girls behind her

shucked corn, shelled peas.

 

Nothing was thrown out.

Husks refreshed the mattress

five girls shared.

Pea shells slopped the hogs.

 

When I met her, she was old.

She sat upright in a side chair,

hands in her lap,

turning her face to look at us children

 

we were useless.

Like Him, Once

 3/18/2026 (c)

His premises may be wrong—

his conclusions about me, preposterous—

still, he is a thinker.

 

He puts in the effort.

For that, I forgive him—almost—

his sermons

on god’s role for women.

 

He says I was a sinner the day I was born,

and reminds me I haven’t stopped yet.

 

I try not to pity him, I remember

 

I was like him once,

a child of a different god,

riding a bus

toward Hollywood Boulevard,

to save the sinners.

 

I was already uneasy

with the truth.

 

Until I realized

I didn’t have it.

In the Right Hands

3/18/2026 (c)

 

In the right hands

even a feather may be a sword.

The written word, the spoken—

both can cut.

 

A sword may point;

may strike—

offense, defense,

practice for inconsequential battle.

 

A sword may be melted down—

rings or nails,

tools for building.

 

Raised high, it rules.

The feather—

tickling, teasing—

draws no blood

 

and still

leaves a mark.