(sonnet from the German of Georg Heym, 1911, freely translated with apologies for the anachronism of using the modern world ‘gulag’ in line four; its purpose is to suggest certain modern analogies with this pre-1914 poem of tsarist Russia, even in such very specific details as the slave labor camps “beyond Verkhoyansk”; today the “abominated”…
I love the gold haloes of the saints in Giotto's frescoes of the legend of St. Francis. I love the plainness of the story, plain as the Saint's brown habit. In the Basilica at Assisi, lying on my back with my binoculars, my feet on my guidebook, I trace the tale in fragments. He is…
Somewhere, maybe in the spirit, effort is trying to remain lost and unnoticed when truly it is the substantial: carrier of bells and evenings, light crisp and unnecessary hugging a wall. A black wall which children shriek at and hit with sticks—no point but much effort. A man stands up, his house is a desk….
One of the laws the pseudo-commissioner decreed: We were to plug our memory sockets Into the damaged main-frame he kept locked In his dungeon. With the flick of his switch, Worlds began to crumble. Or so we thought. And in these quasi-desperate straits Only one person could save us. He'd need A pack of radar…
I wish we were our furthest father’s father. A clump of slime within a warming swamp. Living and dying, fertilizing, bearing, We’d ooze our essence, numb and damp. A sprout of algae or a sandy hillock, Formed by the winds and heavy with earth’s clutch. Then quits; even a pond-bug’s head, a gull’s wing Would…
drifts near the ceiling above every head, one Ma per son, daughter, and grandchild. You have a yellow Ma, Mother, like a lightbulb in a cloud. She's looking at you with a kind smile. She's taking it and taking it. With every Ma there is a Pa to dish it out. You have a yellow…
A pencil is stuck in your back: manifestation of a common practice— doll torture (the flip side of pinning flies). It's this evil innocence we worship in you like a golden laugh. Idol of tacky teenage-hood, devil's workshop of poo-poo magic, R. D. Laingesque schizophrenic peeing on asylum wall, or writing a name in shit:…
In this form invented by the author, each three-line poem has exactly 17 words. I. VERITAS 1. Harvard's River Such blinding brilliance, mirroring Sol on flow: To see you, Charley, First I must shut my eyes. 2. Harvard's Fog1 You house, fair Harvard, so much—you spawn so little— Bloom. Bees Don't poke in glass flowers….
The first ones were attached to my dress at the waist, one on either side, right at the point where hands could clasp you and pick you up, as if you were a hot squeeze bottle of tree syrup, and the sashes that emerged like axil buds from the angles of the waist were used…
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