Boom Hutch

Ulysses and the Hare   It was only after God had taken everything was he allowed to rest, released for a time from His malicious salty grasp. Washed ashore, harried over oceans, a wake of shattered mariners and drowned vessels behind him, the insane anarchist king feeling keen tired muscles stretched over a broken frame. Ulysses, cipher of lost geographies, wonders over the notion of what to do next. I imagine he dreamt there on the beach of Penelope.     Pale skin flushed with activity, arteries running blue carrying blood just under her surface like hidden tributary rivers. The wide unflawed expanse just under the subtle ridge of her collar bones, the country punctuated by her ribs, the plunging region to that juncture where they meet, and thus entwined and locked in a kiss, become a circle complete.   I dream of the faraway Nation of Ulysses under a shower I procrastinated all morning for fear of losing the smell of Her on me. Rivulets run down my own chest in clever patterns. I am

I came out of the blackout to more trees, the truck moving miraculously through them. The music was still blaring, arrogant, insane and relentless. My headlights raked across attendant pines ahead, black dust tinged red with my taillights still rose behind.  I cornered badly, hit more washboard, the back end bucked and broke loose again. I laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. The box of beers fell off the seat next to me and into the passenger well, bottles rattling and shattered against themselves. My two good right tires bounced along the ragged edge of where it went from road to straight down. I managed to bring it out of the skid, avoiding the holler, and then clambering over another hill made it somehow over the final ridge. The idea had been to take the fireroads home from Carolina. I was racing against my body as it shut down from pure exhaustion. The clock on the dash read 2:48. The road started falling again, snaking down into the valley, the truck and I punched a hole o

Sorrow is my own yard  where the new grass  flames as it has flamed often before but not with the cold fire  that closes round me this year William Carlos Williams- The Widow’s Lament in Springtime Every spring I have to ask for the name again. Tulip poplar, Saucer Magnolia, something like that, you’d think I wouldn’t be surprised by her anymore. Whereas last week empty arms cast veins of silhouettes across a cold carpet of previous year's leaves, today I’m able to come home from a long day of work, and face her canopy of flowers, half open like teacups, and that is miraculous news. I take it as further evidence that after two years the sucking wound in my chest has finally closed.  Each March was a celebration, a maelstrom of pink hung beneath the blue, pinks so dark along thick shouldered leaves, almost purple, and then bleeding out rapidly to porcelain white, there was no ignoring it. I notched one end of an eight foot pallet we brought home into the main cluster of stems, six