Jeff Royce

Man hands on misery to man.        It deepens like a coastal shelf.             —Phillip Larkin    It began with horseradish in her mashed potatoes,  her father slipping it in before dinner.  (It began much earlier I suppose.    But this is my mother we’re talking about, younger and thinner and unaware that fathers can be cruel.)  […]

I have this 1960’s sitcom desire  to frolic on the back lawn.  Our shirts will be fashioned after white sides  of ranch style houses.  Our hearts will take shapes  of plastic Adirondack chairs.  The kids can blow bubbles that’ll satellite the shed  like little acrylic space shuttles.  In the linen-scented afternoon, the backward-stumbling sunlight will […]