Crossing in Miller (1889)
"a man stands, balancing, // one foot on one line and the other on another, touching the pulse / of two emergent powers"
2014
"Yes, I have been here before / On the threshold of justice’s door / Half a century ago / In Selma, Oxford, / And Birmingham." [From "The St. Louis Anthology"]
Cleaving
"I unfold my maps and trace my finger / across searching for the most authentic-looking / ruins."
Elegy for Bridge 9340
"Steel trusses & gusset plates gave way:/Splintered concrete bones, somersaults//Of beams"
Still Life, Ohio Valley
"In early morning the tributaries / at Pittsburgh meld, then flow on / for centuries"
Opèksipu Catches Sun Before it Flows Beneath the Washington Street Bridge
"home is built upon the scaffolding / of a hundred thousand stories..."
Today I Laid a Crayfish at Your Grave
"I kneeled at the stump where we laid the Ford agate,/Made up spells and secrets..."
About Leaving (Milwaukee)
An original poem from "The Milwaukee Anthology."
On Chances
"I heard we got the city doing front flips // where every father/mayor/rapper jump ship"
A Skillet of Suns and Oceans
"and there I was,/wearing a two-hundred-dollar wool coat/in my own kitchen.../homesick and hungry"
Appalachian Sunday
"There’s no name/for the things/we do to survive."
How to Find Home
A new poem by Kelly Garriott Waite.