Poetry

a little one, drab, barely skyborne,with nothing of the gut-unravelingacumen of the scavenger                 this is Jackselflimping across marshland, making a decoyof himself, piping up when the day goes dim,so close to the ground he’s almost it     small wonder Peewitis the name the other boys have given him,not Jackdaw, not Rook     the gods of bracken and fly-tipped tornblack plastic…

Lately, I see through a narrow chink in a stairgate.I see doors and think: can I get my pram through that?In the park, I dole out small snacks—ricecake, popped grapes, elven cheeses. If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would be infinite but I have closed us up in stacky cups,a nursery and naptimes;in…

When my mother says I was her kittaken from her too early,I think not of cats but a wolverine,my devourer of snowfields, who,when she can find no more prey,eats herself, even the frozen bones.I crawl down the black phone lineas if it’s an umbilicusto the last refuge on our planet,towards whatever back countryhappens to be…

Her gaze is tipped with curare, her face farouchefrom the kids’ asylum where ice bathsfailed to tame her. Her claws are crescent moonssharpened on lightning. She swims through the star-splintersof a mirror and emerges snarling—my were-Mama. She’s a rainforestin a straitjacket. Where she leapsthe sky comes alive, unleashedfrom its bottle. My mother, trying to concealher…

               1. Picture my mother as a baby, afloaton a waterlily leaf, a nametag round her wrist—Victoria amazonica. There are rapids aheadthe doctors call “mania.” For now, all is quiet—she’s on a deep sleep cure, a sloth clings to the cecropia tree,a jaguar sniffs the bank. My mother on her green raft,its web of ribs, its…

What with the pogroms, the genocide,the ethnic cleansing, the secret massacres,the mass graves, the death camps, the public executions,at last there was nobody left,the country was empty.Survivors who reached the bordersbecame refugees. Rebuked by that silence beyond the mountains,the victors planted willows and in due coursethe country grew into a willow forest.The trees hung their…

Eastwood as No-Name in A Fistful of Dollars.The town called Apricots is built of whitewashed adobe. Behind the walls are widows, staring their tragic arias. Nothing here     flowers or fruits.There is the ringer of the dead-bell, the sprightly coffin-maker. Something looks through the Stranger’s eyes, looking. It is a secret.It is life in this town of…

after Camille Claudel And in the end it was easiest to let goof all that vigilance, the endless distaff-to-spindle rigorof your compulsions, and allow the silks to snarl.For a while, perhaps, you struggled to escape, snared like an insect in your own allurements.You had never believed that life was what happened to us.Rather it was…

And anywhere at all will doTo bring it off, to see it through From soup to nuts via the godsAnd all the other odds and sods Not needed on the voyage, soFire the sunset gun: let’s go, A positively final tourOf what we know now as before— Not to presuppose an after.Let’s make a present…