lubbock, texas

I lived in Lubbock for three years working on a Masters in creative writing.  I lived there two years before I realized that the house Buddy Holly was born in was less than 5 blocks away from my apartment.  You should know that his house is gone, that Lubbock is nothing like Graceland, and you should not go there.  West Texas, I think, is the only place that could ever make anyone miss East Texas. 

 

jr. high achievement award

Don’t feel bad.  No one in my hometown liked me, either.  This is a poem about that.  When she heard the CD, my mom said this poem made her want to cry, which is unfortunate, considering I think it is one of the funniest poems I have ever written.

 

one day, looking

I found a dead guy behind a dumpster once when I was out looking for recyclable cans.  It made me feel really stupid about trying to save the world.  This poem was first published in Chattahoochee Review.

 

modeling nude

Don’t try to visualize this.  I modeled nude several times for a painter when I was in college.  I hope the paintings have been destroyed.  This poem is about that experience and also about how I never felt pure enough to go to church.  I hope the poem makes that connection make more sense than this description does.  This poem was first published in Rag Mag.

 

chore

I hate responsibility.

 

story at the east st. louis bus station

I had a 6 hour layover in East St. Louis.  It was one of the bleakest things I have ever been a part of.  This poem won the 38^th annual Abbie M. Copps poetry prize bestowed by Olivet College.

 

ideal

I went to Europe with a girlfriend once.  It is amazing how one woman can screw up a whole continent. 

 

she is

This is a poem about being alone in a barren room at night thinking about the one person you want to be with but can’t.  I had been reading a lot of Eastern verse when I wrote this, and a modified haiku finds its way into this piece.

 

on stabbing a man and being a good listener

I don’t guess I should say much about this one.  It may or may not have happened in Shreveport back in 1990.  This poem was first published in Laurel Review.

 

the woman above me

Sometimes I fall in love with the damnedest people.  This poem was first published in Snowapple Review.

 

to sleep alone

Gee, I am alone again.  Go figure. 

 

the masturbating baboon at the brookfield zoo

Every time I go to the Brookfield Zoo I catch a baboon playing with himself.  A few years ago, my friend Joe’s dad found Jesus and pointedly told Joe one day that he no longer wanted to drink, smoke, or beat off.  Joe was speechless for a couple of weeks.

 

flashing lights

This is not a poem but happened one night when I was reading at Cafe Aloha in Chicago.  It is a pretty funny and perhaps offensive story about drunkenness and flashing hazard lights in a small east Texas town.  This guy at Cafe Aloha who’d read earlier recounted a pretty funny story about driving drunk, being pulled over in some town in Georgia and explaining his swerving by saying he had been playing air guitar to Led Zepplin.  The cop let him go.

 

crossing rivers

This is a poem about camping out, hiking mountains, waterfalls, and suicide.  This poem was first published in Nightsun.

 

the frog finds his home in the damp, damp world

Someone left.  I am alone.  Gee.  Why don’t I just call the CD "poems about people who left me?"  This poem was first published in Sycamore Review.

 

song

This poem is about paralysis, suicide, firetrucks, mean older brothers, little girls, dead birds and flophouses.

 

baseball with the dead

This poem is about two of my high school friends who died in car wrecks.  I, strangely enough, also died in a car wreck once, but was revived.  Back when we were all alive and stupid, we used to play mailbox baseball.  This poem was first published in Chattahoochee Review.

 

after the long illness

This piece is about my father and me.  Our relationship became a lot better after I spent 4 months in St. Michael’s Hospital in Texarkana, Arkansas.  This poem was first published in Sycamore Review.

 

i total another car just before my birthday

I have been in more car wrecks than I care to remember.  Some of them were fender benders, but I have been in 4 totaled cars, which I think is kind of a local record.  Anyway, until the State of Illinois decided to take away my license, driver beware.  I was actually leading into this poem when I got sidetracked by an audience comment and told the “flashing lights” story above. 

 

doodah the hamster died for my sins

This is a true story. (Kind of.)

 

the second of last things

When I was 18 and stupid I used to race my car against other stupid 18 year olds who had fast cars.  I am haunted by all the things that could have gone wrong.

 

what might catch your eye

What is it that keeps us from really connecting with the people we are supposed to love? 

 

elegy at a south-side el stop

Sometimes I am pretty sure that I am actually dead.  This poem was first published in Artisan, a Journal of Craft.

 

gather us

Someone asked me a while back why I moved to Chicago, and I told him I thought I had made a mistake.  This poem is about that, I think.  I revisit some of my favorite themes of dead people, being left and doomed relationships with artgirls.