Author Archives: ebwrite2014

Durutti Column on the DC Metro

Riding DC Metro in the eighties, Durutti Column
in my headphones, only place I ever knew that music –
soundtrack for commuting to the wrong job,
every seat filled with a different silence,
how they could wear bow ties without a trace of humor,
some scanning Tom Clancy but most deep in bound reports,
noting them in pencil because they lived for doing,
for telling others what to do, for anger with strategic purpose,
leaving and arriving at their homes in darkness
holding hours more of work, solo kitchen island dinners,
nightmares about those working harder
and making anger count for more,
while Vini Reilly’s grey guitar murmured on the Metro
and I knew I would fail at this, could see it in the blanks
of those I passed, even the man asking for change
who said “That’s racism” to everyone when they declined
and who’s to say he was wrong, hanging on
in a town of former student council presidents, all of them
trying to make him disappear and me already half invisible
at every client meeting, Durutti Column reminding me
of where I could still completely be, how my back
and forth as daily cargo could shudder to a stop,
once stuck in dark below the streets
my panic rose until I finally made it home
without the extra time my days demanded,
but I could only hear Durutti Column while
on the Metro, drum machines and guitar shards
of a music barely held together,
his mumbled songs my ghost waiting to return
to my body, staring out the window at the stalled
and sullen state of Virginia.

(First published in Pine Hills Review, April 2026. Thanks to the editors.)

Snow Falling Upward

Surprised to learn you wanted to meet so soon
but there will be a time, you had said,
and on this invalid sun morning, not long after
your wife’s passing, nearly four years after mine,
with what finally feels like winter in the sun’s weak shine,
we’re on our way to watch snow fall upward,
snow geese flocking to the refuge far from town,
annual mystery from the Arctic, plump white bodies
squawking thick on a vast green carpet of winter wheat,
sudden rising as one, snow falling upward into pewter sky,
as I consider each uncopied flake in a blizzard’s fall
peeling loose from frozen ground, reversing course
and returning to the clouds, how that would be –
time and season turning back to different weather.
I’m still finding my way, you said, questioning
the persistence of the weight of what had fallen,
this new confusion in your body. Later you glassed a bobcat,
an animal I always see just as it’s leaving, and I imagined
the one I saw many miles away and several years ago
as the same you spotted now, impossible vision of something
we both shared. Our boots crunched on the old rail bed,
talk wandered into silence past fields birdsong had abandoned,
heart of a diesel train pulsing in the serious wind,
world pressing down even as pintails dipped in the rushes,
herons hunched against the banks in some sort of supplication,
rusted oil wells in the marshes, mute as sculpted markers.
We drove past the geese a final time and headed back to town,
you asked what I was doing about eating. It’s just hard to cook
for one, I said, my few lame lunch ideas. I’m not there yet,
you said. Time, I said, same thing I always say. It’s different
for everyone, but time will not be hurried until one day
you feel less heavy, thoughts I stutter through when faced
with someone’s loss, not knowing what to say at all,
whatever could be said to explain the migrations
and disappearances, stark reversals of our seasons.

(First published in American Poetry Journal, Spring 2026. Thanks to the editors.)

New poem live in Susurrus Winter issue

A poem of mine is being shared in the Winter 2025 issue of Susurrus, “a literary arts magazine of the American South.” It’s one of my favorite lit mags and always features a different photographer in their graphic design – in this issue it’s Scott Craig from Roanoke, VA. His work is special! Grateful to be included with Mr. Craig and a terrific gathering of Southern writers.