The circus wouldn’t have liked anyone Sid married. He could date, yes, he fell in love sometimes, but not showily, nothing alarming, and not for long. While many of his employees were married and whole families formed and grew and shifted in his circus across the years, Sid himself had all their lives to stand…
Surprised by ageand then my father diesActually dies, actuallyChanges form & goes, physicallyInto a small rosewood boxImploded like a star, negativeOn a little table under an awningI have to trust is put into the earth
You let that drop, and I know where you’re from.I know the verbal tic of my hometown—the one I ran so hard from with my kid,some books, and mended pocketsful of hope. I seen it shrug off cornfields like a coat,lie bare and cold and calloused with concrete.I seen it lose steel jobs, oil jobs,…
I live in the basement of the lake.I live on the bottom of the moon.I pry her birch bark loose, grazefor centipedes that swim the heart-wood beneath. I burn the prisondown and climb the gate. Morningafternoon and night, I kiss my jaileron his thin white lips. I am two crowslaughing in a poison eucalyptus. I…
In the dark bedroom, moonlightthreads the latticed door.I hold out a bowl of warm noodlesfor Mother. She wipes droolfrom the corner of her mouth,rose-cotton scarf tied around her head.Blood moon bathes our feeton the cold granite floor.Begonia unfurls a leaf. In two weeks,she will be gone.All autumn I shall lie on her cot,absence swathing my…
It was an early September afternoon, the air stagnant with rare New England humidity, when the girl came to the island. She arrived with her father, the physician, from Boston. She was the first child ever allowed. An exception, The Council said, as they blew the conch shell like a horn, signaling the boat’s arrival….
Hearing the news scares her into wordslike boobs, then my girls comes bobbling out—but her daughter’s words are serious (diagnosis)and she tries to listen but just can’t keep herselffrom reminiscing about her hourglass figureand men she dated years and years beforewho called her Sweater Girl. Silence.Will this daughter give up? Or like the deershe sang about in church, crazed with thirst,crashing through…
For David Shapiro If you are happy you will be sadIf you are sad you can be happyIf you are happy Daddy says control yourselfIf you are happy Mommy wants to be happy tooIf Mommy is happy you must be sadIf you are sad Mommy feels betterIf Mommy feels better Daddy is happyIf Daddy is…
Through Hell and what he saw the dead one thereI wrote a poem of the dead one goingAnd who alive is more than that the deadOne going and who is less how he was ledThrough by a bird named Law like law all-knowingWhere all is anguish and guilt spoils the air And now to write again I ask…
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