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Why I Write Poetry

Because my son is as old as the stars Because I have no blessings Because I hold tangerines like orange tennis balls Because I sit alone and welcome morning across              the unshaved jaws of my lawn Because the houses on my street sleep like turtles Because the proper weight of beauty was her eyes              last…

“A Field of Dry Grass”

Osaka   Hard to imagine Basho died here in a rented room above a flower shop in 1694, as I pause today on Dotonbori Street, shoppers brushing past on either side, to gaze at the giant red mechanical crab stretching its legs over the door of the Kani Doraku seafood restaurant, its eye stalks rotating…

Penance

I offer up this flowerbox my skull dear whomever let its luxuriance exceed its baseness let me curl in the blueblack root hairs and wait for you wind in my teeth will sough sweetly

50 Ways

           I can turn the space of him over in my hands. See if it comes apart, if it’s permeable. Does it keep time, shrink, dissolve on flesh. Does it bounce. Can I back that thing up. Can I see if it stands, if it cuts correctly. If it can clothe me.    If I can I…

About Alice Hoffman

“When I went to a movie set for the first time, I felt that the person I was most like was the set designer,” Alice Hoffman tells me as we sit in a room whose centerpiece is a vivid bouquet of the same tea roses that bloom in the yard beyond the window behind her….

The Suspect

On a factory floor I felt for my keys. It was eight o’clock by the clock on the stall. (I meant to write wall) The tiles were one foot by one foot and sea foam green spoke the little shroud over the letters above the drill room door. Once it was useful to think of…

Cartography

I’m dumb about the world. To me, it always looks haunted, impoverished—especially in snow, which returns it to black and white. And sometimes I look and see nothing— but the elementary smoke rising from a human village, overpopulated, and yet undermade. A woman from there is walking along the side of the road to the…

The Blowjob Whale

We thought we were onto something new. We loved doing it in the out-of-doors, thought ourselves pioneers: the first to sneak off into the darkness, unzip the fly, to feel a breeze on the back of our necks, to open our mouths, our hearts, his heart. We were partial to certain places: the park, the…