Poetry

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…

I think myself thin untila scale calls me to honesty,its numbers the mind of God,unrelenting, and I questiona machine that can drive usto uncertainty, to suicide,or into the edges of murder,thinking we are more or lessnot there or here. One dayI walked down a street feelingmyself there, feeling as thickor thin as I wanted to…

Under her tongue, there was a story.In her mouth, nails. Frances hammered license platesto the back wall of her garage. There hang the years that sunk like a foot in loose soil.That rusted like a hinge. Whose hand or what machineetched the numbers that cruised along in the exhaust of a town that no longer…

Life, the devil you know, the oneyou’ve bantered, bartered with,trading this day for that, this lovefor that freedom, that freedom backfor happiness. Something lacking,something gained. The devilis one hell of an investor, turninga profit continuous as flames.You are wood. You are the paperyou signed your life to in exchangefor this sweet spate of days. Thisis…

Love, if you want meto speak, let me find a way out of my sadness.You are everywhere lingering—moss over rock,rock over seed, seedlings about to remember. Irecall you in small things and nothing: stonesupon water—water turned hard, into rock.Here on the listening lake things burn to be bornand then buried—seed into pond, pondinto withering light….

The smell of her on the book she left behind, the taped tear in the dust      jacket,               the neatly printed marginal notes,the dog-ears, check marks, underlinings (single and double),      the phonetic               spelling of the Russian nameson the inside of the back cover. Setting it aside I wondered if I had      seen too much,               more than she might’ve liked me to,more than…

Current face, new domino in the mirror,it doesn’t look like much now, does it?Has anyone seen the infant?Because of course the infant cannot speak.Has anyone seen the week of early March, 1962, origin of the scar on this chin, scarthinned now and the chin short-whiskered.Trying to slide on concrete into home—that wish made a long…

for Allen Grossman Here’s a side effect that’s very front and center:I am forgetting the words for things. It’s not a matter of mistaking the Ash for the Linden, of conjuringthe chickadees to my hand from the Arrowwood. They are a certain kind of medicine like the imageof the beech leaves moving in a wind…