Poetry

  • On a Photograph of Gurdjieff in a Bookstore Window

    The dome, the mustachelike a circus strongman’s,those shoulders people still climb on.and eyes that hold youin the snow before stackedand battered volumes of mutuallyexclusive systems of belief:UFOs, black magic, MadameBlavatsky’s wisdom receivedat the feet of lamas, whileyours grow cold in the slushy street.His look follows passersbywho, though they can’t identifythe man or recognizethe eyes which…

  • Elegy for No One

    So many have died,to pick just oneseems willful,unkind, and besidesyou might forgetthe friend you promisednever to forget,so let this be for anyone who diedin this season of death,which from now onwill be full of facescoming forward,smiling from the pagelike the line hastilyformed backstagethat stands beforethe curtain, and bows,then follows its spotinto the shadeof scenery and props.

  • Aporia

    Translated from the Spanish by Jesse Lee Kercheval Ocean, there is nonewithout shipwrecks, without the drownedwithout victimsthere is no      oceanthat does not lick the shore      like a sore     or a wound.

  • Elegy for the Road

    Translated from the Spanish by Jesse Lee Kercheval       I ask where the things go that did not arrive at their destination. Themajority of things. The largest inventory in the world. Where are theygoing to end up, the things that do not end up anywhere. Those thatfail, those that have no remedy. I ask where do…

  • Blame Game

    Pin the ozone layer on me: I drove my Hummer into the skywhen I gunned through a red light.I hit outer space; I clearly went too far. It’s hard to tweeze apart a holefrom the everyday emptiness of air. Hard to touch upon a hole & not sailright through. One day or another every iceberg…

  • Please and Thank You

    Say no now and you will get off easy. Maybe.The firebrand in your heart is only a rental,Just a spent ember with nothing left to doThan plead guilty, not no contest. Now go,Go to your room and gawk, or else text-messageYourself, write runes, or if the rhinencephalonIn your boiling brain dictates, write filth,Stinky warm-ups for…

  • The Sacred Harp Book

    If I get religious for a minute, it will be to keep termswith the bewildered caul of being thirteen, surrounded by the dead. What used topeek through the roof, never so much stroking string things and eating afterlifebiscuits, as making sound like a wonky piano dragging its broken leg in an interminable circleof Sundays. I…