Poetry

Days Like Survival

Beginning in the midst of things that split or burn or tear the skin with happenstance, this elegant, unkempt earth of rust and dust, smashed cat and armadillo roadkill, abandoned pickup trucks blocking the berm. A fine scum of rumor and pine pollen coats cars and sidewalks, spring’s clumsy fingers smear the seen with allergens:…

That Winter

In the hundred days I lived in a trailer in Ithaca, New York, I thought unceasingly of that other Ithaca, wine-dark, beset, a place from which to start from, maybe to come home to in some eventuality undreamed of. I cleaned factories for a guy named Ben who wanted to make movies and whom I…

Between Ice and Water

Accept it. There will never be anything else Except this here. April snowstorm Sweeps away the filaments of smoke, and then The sun appears and melting ice Drop by drop trickles from stiff cables. Let’s avoid misunderstanding Stammer out this rapture together with sorrow Between ice and water, in the hazy Spring light when drain…

I Want to Kill the Moths

I can"t say: sweat, and then skin, and then mom, and then speak. No such thing as a sentence, it seems. No such thing as what’s    happening. Moth under the covers, get out. Brown wings, hung on the lamp    stand. If the soul lives in memories then the soul is no matter to reckon   …

Exclamation Point

It could come right now as a dit-dah of rain,     mere pine needle lost in a tree-stack of beads,        thorn expelled from red dot, print felt            an inch from a finger, pursed lips speaking in tears. It makes you look dotty. Easily amused. It starts     like a Spanish ¡—down on your…

Neglect

translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak I misbehaved in the cosmos yesterday, a day and night without a single question, surprised by nothing. I performed my ordinary chores, as if nothing more were required. Inhale, exhale, step by step, tasks and errands, and not a single thought beyond setting out and getting home again….

Every Night

Federal holding cell, Hughes County jail Fights. Never quiet—like years back with the folks, but ratcheted-up, bloodied, multiplied, till the badge writes the last two shovers up, says he’ll do the same for all of us if we can’t keep the crybabies smothered I WANT SOME PEACE, SLEEP, NO MORE GETTING OUT OF THE CHAIR,…