Tag: unsentimental verse
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On Longing
I wrote On Longing after placing my hand near the wood that held my mother’s name. The poem examines how material boundaries fail to contain loss, and how darkness presses identity into one shape that cannot be separated.
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Settling
I wrote Settling from the memory of watching mothers place their newborns into cribs for the first time—the motion was exact, almost ritual. The poem examines how objects record tenderness through weight and release rather than emotion.
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Appalachian Funeral
I wrote Appalachian Funeral after driving past an abandoned church near the highway outside Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, where the wind carried dust from passing semis into the open doorway. The poem’s theme is the residue of faith and labor — how objects, not memory, hold the pressure of what’s gone.
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Ferry
I wrote Ferry after watching a river crossing where sound and weight seemed to trade places. The poem explores how movement and release—mechanical, not emotional—can become a form of grace.
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Love Is
I wrote Love Is after my cancer surgery, when my wife sat beside me and held my hand as I woke. The poem is about how love survives the body’s breaking — not through comfort, but through the persistence of touch after pain.
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Where Are You My Friend…?
This poem emerged from walking through a heat-struck urban lot where absence felt more physical than memory. I wanted the poem to carry abandonment through objects—barbed wire, cats, asphalt—without commentary. The body persists, but only through what it touches. The theme is not grief but residue: what remains when someone doesn’t.
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Wail
Wail began as a test of restraint. I wanted to write a death poem without ornament, without metaphor, without reaching for comfort. The whale song emerged early—strange, bodily, and distant—and I kept it because it refused explanation. The poem is about sound that leaves the body and doesn’t come back. It’s about the final sleep…