Lying Down

I have a friend--I knew her first in elementary school
When we were both new to making up stories--
Who told me to "lie up."
"People ‘lie down’ when they lie about their ages,
Saying they're thirty when they're forty. And they look
So bad for thirty."

The image appeared to me: a middle-aged, sun-wrinkled, bleach-blonde
Tennis-mother, her skirt revealing age spots splattering
Across boney legs as her botox hungry face flirts with the
Sculpted instructor.

My friend swept a strand of red hair from her forehead
And looked at her reflection in the store window.

"I lie up. When I turned forty, I told people
I was forty-eight, and they said how great
I looked for my age."

"So I should say I'm eighty when I'm fifty,"
I took myself half-seriously.

"No, that’s silly. The only lies that people believe
Are the ones that are close to the truth."

That’s what I’d learned long ago.
I think I was taught by a very dark tutor.
A lie is most believed when it best mimics the truth.


Especially the ones we tell ourselves.

Black and White

He would channel surf though the photographs in his mother's shoebox that he kept on the top shelf of the closet, the black ink of her static memories projected on a yellowing white glossy cardstock screen. Aunts, sisters, cousins, classmates in one roomed elementary schools and small county high schools with malt shops down the street and barbershops where men with hats and ties worn in the middle of the day would go and discuss politics and morality. The names of the suspended strangers didn't matter. He didn't need to know them; he only needed to nurse on the comfort that they were always in the same poses, always in the same box, always accessible on that top shelf. He could be certain that black would always be black and white refused to be anything but white. In his world, how could he know for sure that the red he saw on the ambulance light was the same colour that someone else saw on the cola sign? Colours were far too subjective. Black and white were monochromatic absolutes. For this reason he could sit for hours watching the same black and white comedies on television, holding close the sketched images drawn before colour muddled our thoughts.

On the Way Home

Christopher Drywell, age 47, sitting in his Lexus in the middle of Georgia 400,
wondered if the traffic would ever move any faster than the 2-5 miles per hour it was creeping now,
wondered if the traffic girl on Station 109.7 StarFM sounded so cheerful because she was getting a foot massage from a hunky Latino custodian named Raul,
wondered if the thoughts he caressed while looking at his secretary would constitute adultery,
wondered how old Felix in accounting was,
wondered if Felix in accounting worked out,
wondered if Felix in accounting was gay,
wondered if the game would be rained out,
wondered if the person in the car in front of him realized that the candidate on their bumper sticker had lost in the last election,
wondered if that candidate, fresh from scandal, regretted having run,
wondered if he smoked a cigarette in the car with the window open would his wife would be able to smell it later,
wondered if he had an affair, would his wife know,
wondered if he had an affair, if his wife would really care,
wondered if the Mexican construction worker on the side of the road ever felt trapped.

Around the Square

A vampire walks every night past the inns in Savannah's Lafayette square, rumor says, down the sidewalks looking for its pray each night before you go to bed that you are cleared from any darkness and recreated with light weights can't be balanced any more than the heavy ones. We all do our best to walk the line hear the sounds of the man with the briefcase as his footfalls sound on the pavement. He works over there at the courthouse, and he knows he's

A Deliberate Love

Yours is a deliberate love,
No frivolous flirtation,
But premeditated conquest
Based on my need
And Your autonomy.

Before forever on the landscape
Of my sin—the valleys and the canyons—
Your blueprint was formed,
A detailed drafted redemption.

Unlearned knowledge of my soul’s texture,
Felt with each caress made—
Sometimes tenderly, sometimes severely—
Frightens, Costly Lover.
And the ignoble pursued kneels to cry.