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The flight was long. We didn’t touch.
Somewhere over the Atlantic,
I ordered my complimentary glass
of red wine.

Nyibol had always breathed noisily when she had a cold. She would whistle through one nostril and wake up furious with her own little body, slapping the pillow, then glare at me until I laughed.

I rode him for years, my enemy.
That red horse fated to the back
paddock and dog food factory,

Last night, we made love for the first time
in a long while. You held me as you always
have, a little uncertainly, and then with resolve.

“Lady Luck,” Uncle Bob said after I finished a litany of complaints about my school. “Just you wait. She’ll sneak up with a couple of aces when all you’re expecting is another losing hand.” It was Sunday dinner, roast beef, which Bob never...

It isn’t the most beautiful town on the coast,
but I adore it: the crumbling friary said to be haunted
by the Black Nun, the stone house on a short cliff.

Bathed in sun & its fluorescent bloom, I walk
            into the narrow track along Old Taylor Road.

This past July 4, before thunderstorms threatened to spoil the party, I stood on the National Mall amid a crowd that had gathered to watch the Salute to America air show, a highlight of the Trump administration’s Freedom 250 celebration.