translated from the French by Anne Atik Small crystal globe, Earth’s small globe, Through you I see My lovely glass bowl. We’re all locked up In your hard strict breast But so polished, so glossed Rounded by light. Like this horse running Or a lady who halts Or the flower on her dress A child…
My mother, given one name, exchanged it for another—Cohen for Carlan, less “Jewish”— and then for my father’s, whose Edelman had lost its E during the war for “business reasons.” What’s in a name? A Rosenblum without the blum would still a Rosen be. And what about me— Girl who met Goy, and gave away…
Where is it, the semaphore branch or bellwether sounding a trail over hill, dale, parking lot . . . leaves down, birds vanished, only a left-over tic and shiver while overhead roar the test flights, free-fall shadows stippling the defunct garden thick with invasives, those exogamous brides. I ask for bread, someone hands me a…
1 The girl who martyred her dolls, sending them To heaven to wait for her arrival, Sentenced them to stones or fire or the force Of her hands to tear them, methods she’d learned From the serious, dark nuns who taught her. She would press a pillow over my face To encourage sainthood. “Now,” she…
Starts in estuary whelm and whirl of rock-skin, sea-swell, the hove called salt. I loved the hero-to-be, his life first arrowed unto me, scudding, spared, still unconscious. No he and she to wash away yet, my inhale planked to his ex—. Plus our everywhere wet…
The way, at last, a sloop goes sailorless and bobs at the dock, swathed in darkness, the way waves swell and, swelling, slay themselves— water, whatever you want, I want to want that. A nickel’s in the till, then it’s not, it’s in a pocket, forgotten, and the pocket’s in a laundry chute. A puddle’s…
The song of someone like me begins on the penny whistle. A few notes, just a few, up and down. The bass line comes in, then the lead and second guitar. Brushstrokes on the snares. And then the singer, Lord, then the singer steps up. What voice could slip this backdrop? Only the rise and…
If memory were easy, I wouldn’t care for it: Not the poorest truth, the hard-won winter Darling, without a single trick of light or Cloud light-burred and blurred for light green Air to play on. Worse the flirty silliness: The soft, lost summer lies. The hedonist Inheritance: Pressed like a nymph to faun On flesh…
“Everything changes but the avant-garde.” —Paul Valéry A few words are left us from the beginning. Thank you, God, for allowing me a little to think again this morning. Touch my face, touch this scarred heart. Here, touch this upturned face as wind as light. So they labored for three or four decades to turn…
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