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So here are the strange feelings that flickerin you or anchor like weights in your eyes.Turn back and you might undo them,the way trees seem to float free of themselves as they root. A swan can hold itself on the gray ice water and not waver, an open note upon which minor chords blur and…

When I meet you, it’s not just the two of us meeting.Your mother is there, and your father is there,and my mother and father, and what they might havethought of each other. And our people—back from ourfolks, back—are there, and what theymight have had to do with each other;if one of yours and one of…

the barber’s best shears, Dona Rosa’s toucan,all the allamanda blossoms, the brown phantom and his white shadow. The cuckold never came home,but his pants basked on the courthouse roof for weeks. Hippolyta sank. The cemetery swelled. The original Christabove the church vanished along with the toothless nun. We found the demi-virgin strangled in her hammock.When…

For every forest, there is a pig screamingout like a child as the butcher’s knife popsopen its throat. For every bucket of pig’s blood,a bucket of rainwater, saved to hydratea spring garden. For every Amish-horse-and-buggysign on a country road, a teenager exhalespot smoke into a pillow in her parents’ basement.For every time I see you…

After Pablo Neruda This piranha in your poem,this river-missile drawn to fleshI once dangled from a fishing line.I know you won’t believe me,but when I held its flapping body to my ear,it moaned.The piranha moaned,like the medicine man moansof a riverhe believes is an anaconda,a sibilant serpentswallower of men. In turbid watersthe piranha sigh,and baring…

I shouldn’t be, but I’m thinkingAbout the woman who got shotFighting over that sweat-soakedHeadscarf Teddy Pendergrass threwInto the crowd at one of thoseShows he put on for “LadiesOnly” the year I was born. HowMany women reachedBefore the tallest two forgotTheir new fingernails matchedPurses and shoes? I’m no good.I thought I’d be bored with menAnd music…

Before it’s too late—neck-     Grope this life’s most beautifulMonsters until all of this disorder Shapes sacred. Until flocks     Of balloon animals—thousandsOf them—drop from the diamond- Blue sky. Purple hippos & clownfish.     Ticks like hubcaps & backpack-Size wolves. A dancer will find A carved-in-butter replica     Of The Garden of Earthly DelightsSprawling the Landing Strip’s parking Lot. Fingerprints will cloud     The windows…