a wryneck for Wascovich If we were rust brothers before the rain and salt   Before there were no scarcities of tanks to tread Before the slow toe    warehouse of sound was a real knife in my head   Before the shine of steel nativity Before we trussed the tracks for holocaust   Before sanctity forest murder black-coat cacophony If we [...]

-for Nick Traenkner There is alcohol in me tonight, alcohol and yes I have breathed in smoke and breathed it back out out to you surrounded by words unctuous, bombastic, evangelical. Dress me in horse hair, the hair what was once a horse and a belt of leather from what was once a cow so [...]

          -for Eric Alleman He works at the Record Exchange.   I didn’t know this until I saw him there. I knew him despite his lost play-off beard.   He did not know me.    He was not friendly, this man of intent gesture. His voice:    a thumb    holding your face    to the wall. Outside         you hear something    howling. I’m writing [...]

     -for r.a.washington These are- granite days, they demand- hard men, fortifications of strange shapes watchwords- must blend in We split the rift wider- brother gives grift- but my words are foreign currency in his hands. The songbirds The long words spill into our ears- “from whence came ye, wanderer? to loiter in the eaves of [...]