Poetry

and I answer by driving around, which seemsto me the most American of activities, up therewith waving the incendiary dandelion of sparklersor eating potato salad with green specks of relish,the German kind, salad of immigrants, of allthe strange pickled bits we carryover from other places, like we did on Eastermornings in Nebraska, stuffing our Sundayshoes…

a father has lost his son. He circles shoe racks, lingerie, dressing rooms, calling out “Marco!…Marco!…” We all want to help, but it’s justtoo much: Oh, the tragedy of namingthen losing a son named Marco—born to love and to wander, whole head submerged in the starched cup of an outsized Playtex bra, divingback between a…

This practical kid, bornCapricorn, actuary of the stars, he’s planning my death,sure of the thermodynamic heaven he’s invented. Because energymust go somewhere in this system, in his I’ll be repurposed as a tree.And this comforts me, as no discount coupons for paradise ever could.Finally fitting, I’ll meet my zero as the absolute, container of soot…

O tulip, tulip, you bloom all day and later sway a deep-waisted limbo above the dinner table, waiting for a coin to drop into your well,for the stars to pin your stem to their lapel. Soon, on ocean winds, dawn cries its devotion, our world entranced once more into being.Let go your sumptuous rage, darling.All…

1. Know your origin: you are a tokenof the afterwards of love. What flinchesin the ribbon of your utterly new bloodis nothing but the echo of a bed post—pulse.             You have grown up. From filamentwithin your mother’s bulb, you have evolvedinto a chandelier of bones, weightlesslyorbiting your portion of the womb, aglowin skin that holds you…

All winter the ghosts were waitingfor a new high-school teacher who refused to appear, and so youwere roped in. February had the year on pause, the dayslike holes that tripped you over and over in the frozen yard. You hadno knowledge of history or chemistry yet were expected to teachthe dead from a colorful textbook,…

to Sleep I’ll count backward from a thousandtill my teeth begin to grind, down to zero, where the digits tilt and swivelin a ring around the racing eye of the tornado I’m made of tonight.Left alive, I am an opening too wide, much too much gaping skyto slip behind the throbbing canopy of hide I…

My hair was not on fire and the fabric of my shirt didn’t rub me the wrong way.It was the best day of my life when I entered the monastery. My heart was not on firebut enclosed by a high walland covered with new grasses for the white cow who hadtaken up residence there. Each…

I walk uptown with a letter in my head, past the piers and thelanguishing seals, the spiral of a spring day, landmark, harbor, inletand bay; the ocean into more ocean, the gray of a gray sky. Dear God.Dear Absentee Landlord Who Collects the Checks. Dear BarbershopGlass and Barbicide Blue. Dear Recession and War and Empire…