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The earth already knows too much About us. We dig holes And throw ourselves in, Weep, set stones Where no stone would sleep. The mountains, blue yoke in the distance, Are coming down— Rock, bush, slaughtered tree. The sea is washing salt from the bodies Over and over, and without rest. I tell my daughter,…

for Galina Gabay Green rivers run in February at the curbsides. Moscow is so huge, the snow so deep that when once the melt starts, nothing can stop it. People rejoice at that rushing water as we do at the first snow drops. We walk around goony in mid-March. “Fifty-one degrees,” we say. The sun…

Small operas, the seedy merchants at the blurred ends of fuming streets in the immigrant photographs, insist on it. What are you supposed to do with desire in America where your heart is so many poor shops? He takes a girl to the Catskills on a bus. Her dull kerchief and the black hairs wire…

for wisdom bits, I had to act now that father'd suited me up for St-hood. Better late next time.      It wasn't that I minded my toy-razor or lathering up so early, just that the sink swallowing my hairless suds would go all the way to hell and back before it let on there was anything…

At the airport waiting for our plane, we sat next to a Chinese man. He took off his shoe and sock and massaged his foot, working his thumb and fingers over the sole and delicate arch of the instep. Then he held his whole foot between his palms and forgave it, rocking it gently back…

We tore into each other's fragrances enough to hold Wednesday to its last possible moment, but it swept across the windows nevertheless. He always set the table and never cleared it, hoping dinner would break through into something that wouldn't wipe away. They said it was past closing time at the Indian restaurant. We both…

A pupa of pain, I sat and lay one July, companioned by the bird the Indians called “four hundred tongues.” Through the dark in the backyard by my bed, through the long day near my front couch, the bird sang without pause an amplified song “two-thirds his own,” books told me, “and one-third mimicry.” Gray…

At the crowded Ganges once I hitched a ride with tour-group tourists in their bus— They'd let me join them for that trip to the airport through seven miles of city, more of countryside. The members of that group wore wide-brimmed straws, sipped Cokes they'd brought along, showed each other trinkets they had bargained for,…

He holds a slender cappucino cup As still as anything I see or feel. He licks the chilled lime soup line from his lips. I lie about my name and where I'm from; I'd never tell him anything I've done. Without talking, he seems a dream of want. I look for splinters in the picket…