Poetry

Once a doctor inserted an instrument like a tube into my nose and throat. He said it wouldn’t hurt. He said it would drain the signs. He might have said sinuses. I was still young, young enough to play with paper dolls. I remember because I pulled a papergirl out of my pocket and introduced…

A large blousy bird in the nest—the vee       of her beak wide open to receive            all that I stop by to drop in.           Torn twigs are rough pricking      while the nest floor is mossy and tender. I let tasty bits fall into her mouth one after the other after the other—       she…

You could be rowing across a parking lot full of strangers who don’t see you, or drifting silently through the thick walls of an institution, when you reach that shore. And whatever you have on, even a plain hospital gown, that will be your robe for the ceremony that takes place in your last breath,…

Salisbury, solitary, sings as if Isaiah in her—All Along the Watchtower edge and ridge of plain they ride for Warminster. Anger, broken in her, iron age, stone age, bone and barrow, is as if herFather yet not father photographed before the warUnfathomed by her— Anger of another relatively new to her beside her nowLike coulter—plough-hard,…

I want no more to do with what is understandable. There there. Only the lilliburlero of bird because it is songful. The lark ascending the air. Vaughan Williams’ Surrey local choir of ladies sorrowful between the wars. Only the dot and carry one of Clare who gave himself moon and stars to Northampton County Asylum…

        Small mysteries. Leave unidentified that picture hidden in the dresser drawer         and everyone in it, any reason for it, and who and where and why and when you were.         Leave coins in babies’ shoes. Leave words on scraps of paper tucked inside         coffee table books: galoshes, periwinkle, ménage a trois, calligraphy—maybe terrified.         For the most…

A black man and a white man like two philosophical mates are engaged in a debate. What has only one syllable, and no eye, ear, or tongue, yet is God’s class-act creation? Night, says the black man. It has to be night that inspires rest and mystery. Day, says the white man. It has to…

from Chains From dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn, I, slaveto Sir John Hawkins, bound, emblackened crestupon his coat of arms of lion and wave,salute him, founder of the Chatham Chestthat succors seamen maimed in the Armada;salute him true in Spanish, French, Italian;salute him, most courageous founding fatherof Chatham Dockyard and the “race built…

“If you sold this place,” says my neighbor, “you could buy a little flat.” A little flat! One with no room for half my books, no stairs to keep my knees in flexible order, one in which on no morning would my eyes open to next door’s silver birch, self-sown in the days of Marjorie…