Where It Hurts   At first his hands were embarrassed. They avoided diligently. In the dark, they were careful and mention was not made. Until the night I place his fingers upon the rippled deltas of the burn, allowing only the tips to trace the knotted skin as sallow as hardening wax, as dead as sand. And I do not speak of the fire or the hospital months and morphine dreams or the sloughing of skin before I knew him. Flattening his palm, he fans his fingers until the tips settle warm at the edges of the scar and his lips cross hallways and lobbies to arrive at my pillow and my ear, whispering sentences which smell of smoke.

'Flash Fiction, Declension',The Used Furniture Review, Spring 2011    'Open Well',Psychic Meatloaf-Journal of Contemporary Poetry , Issue 1  'Where It Hurts', Kakalak 2009, Anthology of Carolina Poets  'Flight',Right Hand Pointing, Issue 22,/CENTER> 'New Testament', Kakalak 2008, Anthology of Carolina Poets 'Stone Bruise', millers pond, Middlebury Center, PA; Spring 2003 'Ritual' (three poems); No Straight Roads, Danbury, N.C.; Fall 1998 'Manifesto' (four poems); Bohemian Bridge, Shepherdstown, WV; 1995

Read 'Open Well' at Psychic Meatloaf  Read 'Flight' at Right Hand Pointing   Buy Kakalak 2008 and 2009