Border Radio (physical book)

Border Radio collects poems written between 2014 and 2016, primarily in Athens, GA. Key scenes and figures include Freddie Mercury, Normaltown Hall, Manchester Piccadilly station, Rainer Maria Rilke in the period of his early childhood where he was being raised as a girl, and armadillos.

This listing is for a staple-bound chapbook with individually hand-drawn cover art. For an ebook version, see this listing.

David with Guitar

(for David Rawlings)

Try to hear his voice behind her voice,
the soft half-harmony, whispered drone

wavering in and out of tune;
vanishing in a turn of hers,

then shifting off — just barely off,
like the ghost of a melody,

drawing the song into dark
devil's intervals. You could almost miss it —

it's quieter, sweeter than hers
though less beautiful —

and only hear the hauntedness it leaves.
Try to hear it how she hears it,

the whisper beyond her shoulder,
breath that threads her breath across the stage,

known well to her and revealed to the rest
in only a shadowing way

(a wheel inside a wheel,
a call within a call)

then gone in the bend of the shoulders hanging
over the guitar about to break —