Stocking the Pond                500 bluegill in a tank  on the back of a truck,               parked on the bank,  pouring them out. Fifth grade,               early spring. The year  I was taught there were right               and wrong ways to be  a man. I watched               the waterfalling bodies  of the fish, our pond               like a holding cell.…

After I gave him my dented hands which in any case were still valuable                                                                                   …

Sometimes what kills me is serene as snowfall. Proliferating frozen, soft inundation, the ceaseless and so many ways of wanting to die. I can’t sleep for the 2 a.m. murmur of the plows, making their rounds for hours now, unseeing metal sweeping and salting. Rusted chrome in near collision, compelled by the Sisyphean labor of…