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The mockingbirds, that pair, arrive, one, and the other; glossily perch, respond, respond, branch to branch. One stops, and flies. The other flies. Arrives, dips, in a blur of wings, lights, is joined. Sings. Sings. Actually, there are birds galore: bowlegged blackbirds brassy as crows; elegant ibises with inelegant cows; hummingbirds' stutter on air; tilted…

A rainbow, where it ends a red MG, Texas plates, a friend's white empty kitchen. Out the window a blond stick stretches blue legs against a red barn door. I can't see sweat, but her face is red, hair flaxen, chopped blunt as if a mixing bowl guided the scissor. Conversation? Call it awkward. She…

I can't imagine life cradled between give and take, fear and desire. Will no skeleton hands tug from one side or the other? I pace your garden and pigeons scatter though one remains, his tongue fastened like wire to seed. Pure animal greed— he's consumed by it, lost judgment. Will I too hunger in your…

In this summer month, two separate men were lost in the local woods. Can woods be local? Is there more than one wood? It is unlikely. Though there are two kinds of woods, visible, and not. The first man was feeble-minded. Left his goodwill party, saw something, heard something, went to it. They found his…

Right over left, left over right, Mama disciplines braids. The Hair Rep melting on her fingers irrigates my corn rows. She sings don't let this harvest pass you by. I struggle to stay a child but I hear her. I'm between her knees and see myself as Papa's overalls coming through the wringer Jewish flat…

Her face is deep mahogany, shined with min oil, a mirror that sucks my face into its shadows, peat absorbing rain. I puff the jeweled pipe, blow smoke directly into her spider-lined lips. I exhale. She inhales, tucks her shoulder under mine. A beaded curtain divides our room, the gentlest type of boundary. We shuffle…

clearing the sidewalk, sweeping a path through the rubble, I found some trash I had to kick off the curbstones. under the wheels of trucks someone took a tumble. a shoppingbag lady watched and began to mutter, but I couldn't hear her, couldn't make out the yammer the crackle of paper dogs in the nutshell…

They should have slept, would have but had to fight the darkness, had to build a fire and bathe a man in flames. No other soap's as good when the dirt is the skin. Black since birth, burnt by birth. His father is not in heaven. No parent of atrocity is in heaven. My father…

A clear-cut wreck, I made the poet nervous Asking what salvation writing could afford. “You mean,” she asked more slowly than she thought, “Like religion?” “Exactly,” I said, knowing She was a religious, solitary woman. It was as though she guessed my real question Was, “Can poetry keep one from the question, ‘Why this?’ Why…