Ohio Poems

Ohio Sea Song

Where the groundhog has chewed the chain link
I slip through a brittle-boned hedge, and I am there
where geese sail a puddle-deep fog.
We taste the sea in its brine-washed ripples
splash through its salty clouds. Ohio rides on
oceanic currents, the Atlantic gets swept up
on gull wings, surf drifts West for miles,
then flops down and paddles deeper.
The sky

serpent mound

under the serpent mound prudent
demons (NOT monsters) preserve the
nuts and 
endosperm meant for
later day 
postmen to deliver
when the time is
all too convincingly ripe

May 4 1970

May 4, 1970
shots rang out
tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming
four dead in Ohio

Ohio

I used to stay inside. 
Then I burned my finger on the stove. 
No one lives there anymore. 
Except me and I forgot the bandages. 
So I went to the store and never went back home. 

Anxiety-
Keeps me running, and hurting. 
Traveling long distances. 
Running, and never as fast as a car. 
Although it is

Donald Trump Rocks Ohio

From blue collar workers 
tool and dye filling the 
slots more jobs more 
job awesome tower 
city the flats the docks 
Cleveland rock and roll 
hall of fame the Browns 
the beaches no more 
fake news finally on 
board with the best 
of the best Donald 
Trump wins you know it 
you’re hired best poet

Ohio Ashes

She’d kept the pewter dusted and displayed
since 1969.
A verdigris had leached out of the urn nevertheless.

She had been hard on him, had forgiven little,
but felt much closer now.
The television became a corner coffin,
its screen a penumbra she often spoke to.
She had interred it in 1974 after Nixon left office
“Disgraceful.” She had said both to his

Ohio Ghosts

They tumble deceptively
onto the fissured asphalt,
plaster cracked years
flake away where no eye watches.

Hollow houses, their boards rotted
by the chew and gnaw of tireless winds,
old-time burgs, small, forgotten,
lost now within a retreating landscape.

We used to thrive in a hard-scabble way.
We used to be owners of faithful dogs,
the daughters of grit-hardened men,
sons of backwoods riflemen,
blood kin to

How Ohio Came to Fame

A fragment of matted stone breaks surface,
it is already colonized
        by moss and fungi factories.
Eventually all will churn
     green spawns to green lawns,
not yet of course, ‘yet’ has to wait
for the rain and the blood to settle.

Stone must be crushed
by the weight of circumstance,

tailgating in Springfield Ohio

Citing cats some immigrants ate
Was his weirdest part of debate
While this barbecue
Could ignite a few
It won't make America great

He's mired with the syndrome Tourette's
The point he should make--Trump forgets!
Supporters have pain
That his tired dead brain
Is consumed by those eating pets

Ohio and Kent State

Ohio and Kent State
were far away from Australia.
But like America, the Vietnam war
hung like a noose around
the collective neck of the Nation. 
We were fired by a cause,
an innocence born out
of a belief that a voice could be
louder than the gun.

Banners and protest choked 
the commerce of cities,
chants rose like prayers 
to drown out drums.
Governments

ohio weather

shorts in the morning 
sweatpants in the evening 
ohio weather

ohio earthquake

middle of night 
slight shake a little rumble 
Ohio earthquake

ohio weather

falls weather changes 
t-shirt and shorts all day long 
next day a bit cold

6 Lines

6 Lines


Shored-up wooden boats standing in the mud, braced by boards to stand erect,
   
We vigilant men past sixty, retain our dignity, and point to heaven, with masts securely fixed to the deck.

Like a thinning forest of greying painted trees, we are picturesque in a sunset with cawing gulls flying by.


Though the tide

Ohio Sea Songs

Where the groundhog has chewed the chain link
I slip through a brittle-boned hedge
and I am there where geese sail
a puddle-deep fog.

I taste the sea in its brine-washed ripples.
Ohio spates with oceanic currents,
the Atlantic gets swept up on gull wings
surf pours West for hundreds of high miles,
then flops and pools.

The sky has fisheyes in it.
Between the

• Short Ohio Poems
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