thirsty goldminers
nourishing on
mercury-filled water
sweet tooth fills
with gold amalgam
In the beginning,
all my little poems
were suicide notes.
Five thousand pages,
one long suicide note.
Audrey Rose: Who’s this Sardine you’ve been writing about the last week?
Jackson Andrews: Joe already explained who he was.
Paul Peterson: I remember him mentioning it. The Sardine’s a moron.
Joe T.: Maybe you should unfollow me, Paul.
Generally, we’re all useless bystanders to the events happening around us or that we’re involved with. Anything significant goes on behind our backs. As if we’re programmed to ignore all the bad crap that happens in our lives.
Long-time readers of Unlikely Stories might remember me writing about my daughter, Michaela. (Michaela was assigned male at birth, so you might remember me writing about my son.) On October 24, 2023, Michaela died unexpectedly in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon.
Once inside, I quickly got a feel for my surroundings. It smelled awful. Like something had died and rotted in here. The floor was sticky and there was no way I was going to sit in that chair. I wanted to get his over with.
They fly into the sea
like a ghost's imagination
and its bewildered dream.
Upon the shore for a brief time
their songs echo, skip
Poetry workshops
trauma and abuse
A room of fourteen teens
about to age out of foster care
It is evening all afternoon. Winter all spring and summer. There are nights when Mr. Mallard looks up from his desk and swears he sees the shadow of his missing wife brush to and fro before the panes.
But the full, necessarily subjective, effect of each piece—the elements and their arrangement—takes the work to another mind-space, a different perceptual dimension, at times ineffable but always communicating.
None of this may make the slightest difference
in how the earth and the sun and universe revolve.
But we are human and addicted to action,
the probable less attractive than the possible.