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the o’s of his shirt the o’s of his spectacles, his eyes, and his pupils the o’s of his navel and nipples the o of his belly of his face and nostrils his crown of empty hair of the caps of his knees, the balls of his heels o of his watch face and the…

Nothing whole is so bold, we sense. Nothing not cracked is so exact and of a piece. He’s the distempered emperor of parts, the king of patch, the master of pastiche, who so hashes other birds’ laments, so minces their capriccios that the dazzle of dispatch displaces the originals. As though brio really does beat…

for James Carroll       The freeway shudders under heavy trailers, and layers of accumulating afternoon heat.     A cormorant perches atop an inlet piling, the creosote log, driven into the silt, swaying     in a trace of tide. Desolate gravel raked around the storage farms, the winter-fuel stockpile.     Then, monumentally squat, the natural…

You came to me first as dawn hauled up on ropes of apricot above the blackened wall of white pine. You came from the south, from the highest places, came down from the mountain running. You were announced by the crows, the shrill calls of alarm from the uppermost branches. You opened your throats in…

All but saints and hermits mean to paint themselves toward an exit leaving a pleasant ocean of azure or jonquil ending neatly at the doorsill. But sometimes something happens: a minor dislocation by which the doors and windows undergo a small rotation to the left a little but repeatedly. It isn’t obvious immediately. Only toward…

The skylight filled with snow, like whitened ash. Three traders flagged a taxi going south. Inside the bank, the ATM spat cash. You put your shivering fingers to its mouth. Knowing tomorrow the temperature would rise, Manhattan churned the Easter snow to mud. I saw the faintest passion in your eyes. The doctors found new…

is right, the pear is always askew at the brink, always in danger of falling straight out of the world of sphere toward the floor we don’t often see, that might be painted a rosy brown or gray green and still tilt into the landscape that needs brushstrokes to complete it, to fill in—but he…

How do you sleep? he asked, and I said Wait—I know— because I didn’t know. My husband insists I sleep a certain way. —Not on your stomach? He seemed disappointed. Then on your back? —Maybe, my back, or my side. I didn’t tell him, I sleep like something tossed onshore, —or the way we are…