Poetry
Work History Bartender’s malaise in my mid-twenties; I smothered fruit flies with cocktail napkins. Sitting at a trolley stop near Little Italy, thinking about City College — graffiti scrawled like Arabic on the sidewalk — …
1967: “My World Fell Down” Imperial Beach remains remote and intolerable, Both in memory and all its stammering desire. My radio flourished with L.A.’s visionary decibels. I feared its LSD as friendly fire. The hippies …
California Love Poem The sun has an orgasm across the valley as Pasadena opens up in front of me, the Suicide Bridge pushing an arm out of green sleeves, orange blossoms keening after a mid-spring …
I Hear America Singing I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his …
Kernel When I discovered people eat apricot kernels, use them in amaretto and biscotti and apricot jam, part of me was glad to learn the world is more edible than I had known, but another …
Thoughts at the End of Empire It’s possible future generations will destroy our art, literature, music, film, and corporations, in bitterness for allowing ecosystem collapse, and mistrust for how many leaders were distracted, apathetic, selfish, …
On the Balcony of The Signature “I like her; I could watch her the rest of my life.” — Philip K. Dick As my best man handed me a bubbly drink we toasted clinking clear …
When Your Head Went Through the Windshield It Reminded Me That Grief Sounds Like Whip-Poor-Wills We bury you a little more each Tuesday. The sky today is carnival-glass. The way the wind blows. Your destruction …
A Memory of June When June comes dancing o’er the death of May, With scarlet roses tinting her green breast, And mating thrushes ushering in her day, And Earth on tiptoe for her golden guest, …
Love Poem Your love is gentle only as the earth is gentle: You are a truth of the myriads her soils And brine can breed, protect with humid fumes, Then obliterate in possessive innocence. Men, …
In May Yes, I will spend the livelong day With Nature in this month of May; And sit beneath the trees, and share My bread with birds whose homes are there; While cows lie down …
The Measure of Man The word and the world and the weather Are measured by meters we make. What’s given is given; however We receive only what we can take. So we take what we …
On Receiving a Death’s Head Rosary Some twenty years ago, I was eighteen And being young, I knew I’d never die And came to Rome, the oldest place I’d seen And in St. Mary’s church, …
Literature 309B, Modern to Multicultural American Literature In the upper division Lit classes there’s a loose interpretation of truth. The instructor faintly prompts discussion and each student speaks, one at a time, as in a …
Scott Starbuck, a writing and literature coordinator at Mesa College, is the author of Lost Salmon (MoonPathPress) from which the following excerpts are taken. Know-it-all If it can be caught, shot, bought, or trophy-mounted, he’s …
Remains Such a tiny little box to carry a soul Faux wood with a walnut coat What does it hold? One foot wide and six inches deep, large enough for a person 170 pounds before …