For me, verse is infrequent punctuation to the constant flow of prose. Infrequent and also unexpected, because while I arduously search for the next elusive sentence no matter how long it may take, the poems thus far have always found me and arrive nearly whole when they do.

And though I dutifully capture and refine them, I’ve never been sure of their exact relationship to any of my long-form writing. But thinking about it, that’s not quite true. It’s less about uncertainty over the poems and more about the fact I try not to dwell on them. Maybe because I see them as momentary and  inexplicable impulses–like a split-second homoerotic thought or an instant of darkness while standing slightly too close to  the edge of something dangerously tall. It’s better not to think about these things too much; best not to follow their respective logics to whatever destinations they may lead.

And so all I can do while remaining honest is to shrug and and introduce the latest from what  is clearly my bicameral self–mostly produced by one part of me to the slight astonishment (and occasional annoyance) of the prose-centric other chamber: An aftershock from the East Coast quake woke me in the middle of the night last week–in much the same way that bad dreams regularly do. And instantly the entangled gist of “Aftershocks” was there, forcing me to polish it when I should have been bashing-out exposition. Natural disaster, meet neurosis; aftershock, this is anxiety.

But now it’s done, and true to my word, I’ll be more than happy to stop thinking about it. After all, no one needs dangerous thoughts at the edge of dangerous places . . .

Aftershocks