I’m a little behind on this blog – which is funny because it no longer has any readers and to be ‘behind’ implies that something is actually happening. Which it is, of course, if only in one’s mind. Then again, that is where everything ‘happens’, so I suppose a lot has been happening. (Forgive me, I’ve been reading Homo Deus and I’m beginning to think like a cyborg.)

As far as poetry goes, which is where this blog is at the moment, a few of my poems have appeared in the last few months, most notably in Verse-Virtual. In fact, an entire sequence of poems about my father was published in October. There are also photos and some prose, which makes it a cool mixed-media kind of thing. Below is my favorite of the poems, which is about how my dad used to wake up at night – sometimes more than once – and raid the fridge, guzzling milk and pretty much anything edible he could reach.

Raccoon

He’d empty nearly a whole gallon of milk
each night, metal tubes of anchovy
paste, stewed tomatoes, hamburger
meat he called ‘steak tartare’, salted &
peppered, black cherry ice cream
meticulously excavated to reveal
a diminishing pink ziggurat
at its center like a frozen heart,
gobs of fruit leeched to his beard
then walk the house in the semi-dark

his open eye a roving periscope.
Once he snacked on an entire tin
of Danish butter cookies, his delicious sin
betrayed by a tower of ruffled papers
on the kitchen counter – as though
a thoughtful raccoon had raided
our garbage while the world slept.

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