A Way With Words

Tim Cullen's poems arrive like overheard thoughts-sharp, unsettled, alive to the fragility underneath things. A philosopher grappling with Lucifer's problem. A green Buick suddenly precarious as a glass egg on ice. Lucky children learning grace isn't "granted only them."

These are poems written in the margins of a busy life-composed between trials and travels, rewritten across years. The five-line form (when he keeps to it) gives each piece just enough room to pivot, to land a thought before the next arrives. The subjects shift: seasons, water, circuses, galleries, the mathematics of romance that "won't work / regardless of chemistry."

There's wit here, and melancholy, and philosophical restlessness of someone who's spent decades in demanding courtrooms while keeping one ear tuned to something larger.