Poetry

The world is not limited to literature. I was sitting in the Adirondack chair when it floated by. Mother and Father were on the other side of the lot building a wall out of small pleasantly shaped rocks. I came to them and said, “It’s in front of us,” the sun burning like an absence….

Now on this table a small bowl of salt, and I think of the lagoon, quiet at midnight, in moonlight, you in that doorway, your sarong a flare: if I needed you you were there, offering. The body is water and salt. A breathing sea. Why do we think we know better than the body?…

A large steel knife hovers above Main Street. All night it goes house to house, poking its glowing eye through each roof in its turn. It looks in on the accountant, sleeping fingers tabulating debt on a quilt. The chief of police is safely asleep with his secretary. It was never about love. Grandmother’s in…

Dear __________wise, Dreamt you pregnant again, growing further from our days of games. I muttered like a dreaming animal, legs twitching every now and then. If only I might reach up to Mother’s version of heaven or its replica. I wasn’t meant for such a small body, good only for being mistaken for a child’s….

What ghost threw                                my hand across my face? He roamed my sleep in that room dark under pines. Another cried softly for an hour, till comforted. Lakes, mansion, woods, studios— all of it loss                     and the love of art. Mornings I’d stare at an old story: the touring car draped in a tarp,…

We would walk with it into the open Look down and read the shadows Of the clouds passing over it The birds sang dial tones The infected birds Gray sentences uncurled As we smoked our manuscripts The cattle went mad  Their blue lips smiling At a sign in the distance We slaughtered the distance It…

By perspective, I meant how                                                      eventually every landscape wouldn’t have to include defilement, or any other outrage, getting smaller each time we looked back on it,                                                            or forgot not to. An armload of millet and sunflowers could, despite the fact of July, just like that, turn the room October. I believed suffering happened…

All Winter I’ve Waiteds. The Then You Came Backs. Wands. Wounds. Tarot Cups. Lisps. Strapless Dresses. Sylvia Tears. Conjugations. Anne Frank’s Looms. Another Man Done Gone. Kleenex After Sex. Mrs. Manner’s Accidents. The How Funerals. The Greedy Toos. Freaks. The What Happens Every Afternoon. The Purple Spot on My Neck. The Eye Tricks. Children’s Bibles….

sweet, waxy smell, and opaque film it dries to a kleenex on the thumb, a coal-black residue it lifts, the watery depth of tarns, corroding vapors, killer oxygen, pure proficiency, what it should be, neutral as a crease, or a smart salute, or alignment, the meditational boots under the slow, circular spit, the mindless attention,…