Rabbits at twilight;
the virus on TV
performing its terrible poetry;
the President at Walter Reed,
spite I feel & guilt at that;
uncertainty,
the ballots already in the mail
pockmarked with black dots
like another plague;
awkwardness of love
in a pandemic
(otherwise lust, a subtlety);
a squeal of brakes on the highway
that beckons us
sitting at home watching news
or rabbits at twilight:
unconcerned,
frolicking between
blades of grass & sex,
unafraid of anything
but everything.
is author of five poetry books—Misadventure, I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, Ultra Deep Field, The Prisoners, and The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled—and two novels, States of Mercy and A Song Without a Melody. His writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Mid-American Review, Rattle, River Styx, and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia, received a fellowship from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts, and spent five years in a West Virginia prison. His sixth poetry collection, Escape Envy, is forthcoming later this year from Brick Road Poetry Press.
