Poetry

The Lion and The Gazelle

Because the bullet was a dream before it was a bird. Because the bullet was a dream before it alighted in the child’s body while he looked at a pigeon wobbling through the air. Because the child has moved into photographs on mantels and the dreamer’s hands are folded in his lap and have not…

Leophantos

After Posidippus   When my ship was wrecked on the rocks, and I died, Leophantos, a traveler, found me. Long on the road, he mourned by my side and wrapped a shawl around me. Alone by the sea he buried me and offered up his prayer. But I, too small to tell him of my…

Deja Vu

It happened to me once. Winter came and snow quilted every inch. I stood on the soap box as I was told, and made staggering accusations. The public ignored so I retreated behind the potted yew. I was waiting for a moment I was supposed to have on a balcony overlooking the giant gridded landscape….

One-Eyed Midwife

                                i. Old gold stars & a basket full of spinning eggs. I have been lit by handless fire: I surrender.                                 ii. A sliver cricket chirps Luna! Luna! quickening yellow eyelids of awe.                                 iii. Whose milky nipple nurses a galaxy? Whose changeable face peers over a cradle?                                 iv. Crone who never dies…

Stowaway’s Ascent

The footsteps are unanimous, an urgent ovation which I took as the most wrong moment to show myself. If compassion struck the hull to pull us down, who could show compassion then to one such as myself? But eventually the storm moved on, silence proclaimed the shipmen gone and I lay on my back in…

Teahouse

In the dark field, The question is the same. Desiring to sit and not sit In one place. And write nothing about smoke, Flaring birds with diaphanous wings, A crow’s intent, how slow the elderly Beneath spangled trees—how thoughtful their retreat. One bottomless pot. But I can’t keep Roethke out of my thoughts, Tu Fu…

The Puzzle House

“I think you think I don’t know who you are,” she says at the window, “but I know what I know.” She sits across her tiny, white, bizarre, and sterile room, watching the falling snow. He stares at the half-done puzzle on the floor: Escher’s Waterfall, just more confusions for someone seldom coherent anymore, being…

What Kitty Knows

In the same week that John F. Kennedy, Jr., with wife Caroline and her sister Lauren, crashed his private plane into the sea, a Kentuckian who worked for Tyson Foods— which gave big money to President Bill Clinton, who led the mourning for JFK, Jr.—fell into, not a vat, vat sounds undignified, like in that…