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Times like this, when gnats wheel in light above the magnolia, I believe I'll return to this life, that you will return. I will be the battered woman in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, who hobbles to the interstate with a girl child in the rain, who picks up a ride and counts the bells of sage…

You'd think we'd be used to it, but it's an odd party, all of us in one room, the world in the other, language in its white gloves circulating with finger-foods and billets-doux—for you? For you? What to do but take its word for things —our humble servant, our only foreign correspondent, making some kind…

Those were strange days, when we were kids Says the bartender I remember this one kid I met Doing construction down at Huntington Beach Told me he used to work for some drug dealer Like the guy was thirty-five and bald The way I'm getting myself And Mikey was some blond god, Irresistible, so his…

—for Cecil Allouise Knott, my grandmother: Those who love us are the best teachers. The blackened window fogs above the drainboard. She sighs and cannot see the holly berries she will pin to her dress in the morning. She brushes strands of blue hair with a rubber glove and scalds the knives and forks repeating…

Last night my wife brought my son into bed, to sleep between us fitfully, his hunger having startled him awake. He kneaded the air then held on fast to my finger. All day I'd walk from some new anger or other, trace my own steps, imagine wrongs. I'd walk room to room forgetting things— table…

From the moon, our excellence Will be obvious: preferable To all jewels, this Blue-and-green marble With its moveable pallors Hanging in the dark Will speak to the hand and eye— Any boy would want it For a possession of his Own, to cup in his hand and carry In his pocket, like a favorite knife—…

There was a fence, a loosened strand of hair, and so something of a kept appearance to the place, though what was kept, or if it were kept still, we could not tell. And halfway down to the sea the winding one-track road or worn way over the two- hundred-year-old boil and spill of dark…

Dizzy from cross-country flying I dumped my imitation leather suitcase on the king-sized bed, then walked out through the marble lobby towards a doorman dressed as a Tudor knight. What a rotten job he's got! I thought. But I wore a silly outfit, too— a polyester business suit meant to make me look like profs…

for Ignacio and Norman At dawn, I've heard them in our yard, my son's two friends doubled over and cackling, like the birds that fly in from the countryside. Or like two old men crouched in prayer, but for the squeals, an hysteria that comes and goes with eight years. Perhaps, it is the spell…