Poetry

Powers

She’s in the purple cone flowers, in the yarrow turning brown, nodding to lemon lilies. I hear her slighting a neighbor: “She’s flat as an ironing board.” Nana hands me an iron. “Get your head out of those books, they’ll fill you up with words.” She’s in my word pie, my alphabet soup. The day…

The Other Tiger

And the craft that createth a semblance —Morris, “Sigurd the Volsung” (1876) I think about a tiger. Twilight exalts The vast and never-resting library And seems to make the shelves of books recede; Powerful, innocent, new-made, stained with blood, He will move through his rainforest and morning, Will leave his spoor upon the muddy bank…

My Stab at Recruiting

The all volunteer unarmored drop-out meth-head accepting army, be all you can be dead here and slow or swifter in the sand, poor black white chicanas need jobs, who doesn’t like bread with their shrapnel in the morning, I feel a draft coming, a daft numbing of sense, can you dig it, your fox hole…

The Great Loneliness

Everyone had heard of the great Loneliness but no one could be sure they had it, it’s impossible to talk about and comparisons are useless, like trying to judge butterflies by weight. You could be folding towels still warm from the dryer and suffering the Great Loneliness or suffering falling short of the Great Loneliness…

The New Life

I woke in the middle of a wooded trailer park (in the middle of somebody’s lies), lying mired in a muddle about where I was, with nothing I could call my own: no shoes, no shirt, no pants, no socks, no job or occupation, income none. Wrecked mobile homes on either side hinted at ruin…

To Posterity

Even before I had arrived on the scene, Whitman knew I would stand just where he stood on the edge of the East River watching the tidal flux and the swoop of gulls, and maybe you have stood there, too, among the barrels and the taut wires. But I would rather know— assuming you and…