Blood Pudding

fat crackles as the tea

steeps and she tells stories

of catching the blood from

a stuck pig for

puddings, the stream of it

making a sort of music

against the side of the

pail, until she dropped it

as we butter bread fine-sliced by

machines and place shrink-wrapped

rashers gingerly on the pan, they

sing to us in a different

language, our stories similar

but dissimilar, the trading of

open fields for closed

classrooms, the curlew’s cry

for the strut of city pigeons

*published in Florida English 14 

Shamrocks

the writing, blue on white, was

a spidery lace, the delicate clump of

shamrocks fallen to the

parquet floor, the red-white-

blue-red-white-blue of the

envelope bearing foreign stamps

echoing the gold tasseled

flag we daily pledged to as

astronauts soared through black voids and

we drank Tang

in a cavern of bricks, blond,

red, thick-mortared, stone upon

stone, strung together by washlines,

narrow, sickly hedges

leaned up against some, catching

the last of the afternoon sun,

shadows lengthening upon the sidewalk

before all was dark again,

grinding of wheel-noise on the elevated tracks ever more

pronounced, now, under the

blinking of stars shining

on other shores

*published in Florida English 14