Thursday, May 31, 2012

Pre-war construction

Washington Heights

 One of the heavy marble steps squirms as you add more weight to its tired structure. The weighty stone slab wiggles width-wise, making you wonder if it will give up and drop your body to the staircase below. 



Monday, May 28, 2012

Daily touches

South Minneapolis

 What hasn’t she touched? Resilient Venezuelan weeds didn’t stand a chance against her tugging. With a delicate wipe of a child’s peachy cheek, she made tears vanish. Her hand was seized as a man led her to safety during a sudden storm. Toilet paper in her hand was the last sight a juicy spider faced. But of everything, she has applied her finger to the smooth shutter button of her camera most regularly. 

Thursday, May 24, 2012

No sprinkles please

Billy's bakery

 The eggs and flour interview for the job and are hired. The eggs, crack-free, are taken home; the flour, its deepest white, poured into a bowl. Creamed butter and sugar suit up the cakes, just for the big day, your birthday.

Happy Birthday Stephen!

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Fleeing light

Uptown Minneapolis

 The light can no longer be patient. It escapes the stumbling speed of the car and soars at its own radiant pace. 

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Pink flowers

My nightstand

 For fifteen hours a day, during the month of May, sunlight feeds the growing buds. Each day, the sun floats through the garden, admiring the new beauties that have awakened. 

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Night View

The Heights

 The husky bridge is on duty at all times. No rest or shift changes. Hour after hour, year after year, it shoves warm engines across the athletic river.

Friday, May 18, 2012

El fuego nuevo

Ninja New York Restaurant

 The whispering fires that ate kindling for fifty-two years are suffocated. Atop the mountain, a man’s heart is severed from a gushing aorta. In the blood-flooded hole, a new fire is started. Men with torches spread the blaze to every dark dwelling, illuminating the empire once again. The families are calmed knowing that the long rays of the fifth sun would be pleased and lighten their land once again tomorrow.  

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Colorful trains

94W


 Amos tours senselessly with the train through a gray-colored, industrial Minnesota. He hopes one day his roaming will cart him to a palm-infested South Carolina. A long time cohort, Static, enlightens him of a track that floats along a silenced beach. As the ocean swells with envy of his artificial, from-the-can blues, Amos will long to be as natural as the ocean. 

Monday, May 14, 2012

Resting butterfly

Peace Garden
  
 He can only focus on the beauty in front of him; the rest of the world is of no importance. Her brilliant orange freckles, her soft presence, and her distinct scent of lilacs all make her mesmerizing. He engages in the customary activities of laboring, consuming, slumbering, but desires she be his existence. To hold her without end in his wings, no richer would he be.  

Friday, May 11, 2012

September 2:07 am


Lake Harriet

 The boats twirl passively in circles, trapped to the floor of the lake.  After years of this life, like ponies of a carnival ride, they succumb to the imprisonment.  There are no protests, no whinnies.  The hopeless silence establishes their eternity as slaves. 


Thursday, May 10, 2012

Water bottle

Hiawatha
 
 She promises they will reunite here, in the familiar rock-laden terrain where their forever started. The plan is to run away together. He waits twenty one days, nervously with sweats, hoping she's just running a little late.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

DUFPO (Down under the Ford Parkway overpass)

St. Paul

 Clouds formed, rejecting the river of droplets. A girl twirls a delicate hand in the lifeless water and her kindness bleeds energy back into the unconscious being. Spirit flutters across the surface in ripples, resuscitating the depressed molecules. 

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Lip stain

Minneapolis kitchen

 Harlot lipstick should not be donned while drinking from coffee cups or a wine glass. The stain survives the industrial dishwasher and is reapplied to the next patron's innocent lips.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Minnehaha shed

Near 54th and Xerxes

 

 The knee-deep Minnehaha Creek strolls around Minneapolis, cascading fifty feet into the sprinting Mississippi. Along its journey, it is surrounded by homes hugging the clear water, some whose luscious backyards trip into the lazily moving stream.