Poetry

I flick a switch—out flashes the light bulb,like God snapping his fingers in my face:Wake up, Pumpkinhead. I’ve been running aroundhalf-naked, with the rest of America,wearing only a credit card and a cashmere scarf.Arf, arf. Yesterday, I went to Circuit City’sgoing-out-of-business sale to revel in the fall of capitalism,but all I saw were the sad…

Before they put Cousin Gladys inside the ground in a cornrow of fair-skinned Creole men, I sat in her funeral mass imagining two shadows dancing in the swish of a swift moving blade that slit her dreams in halfand sent her father strollingacross the cane field like a land-bending river, turning a page she could…

Did you ever see stars? asked my father with a cackle. He was notspeaking of the heavens, but the white flash in his head when a fist burstbetween his eyes. In Brooklyn, this would cause men and boys to slapthe table with glee; this might be the only heavenly light we’d ever see. I never…

At the airport the conveyor bears small yachts shaped like luggageinto the distance, and I am headed, when they let me pass through the X-ray arch, toward home. There is a distancesometimes greater than this between us, since you are in another state—gaseous, solid, liquid, light—and I admitI am often absent lately from whatever is…

for Linda Gregg Safe in the light along the bankBeing in believingNo name    Only being On the bank radiant and blank Safe watching and seeing     On the brink Of the light    Blank    No blame in being Waiting then breathing in being   SeeingSinging   Let my voice    Let my voice ceaseBeing   On the banks along that brink After the blaze of knowingThat…

By wings whose shapesare but half a heart?     Feathers oiled with     country clubs andgasps of delight? Not for thesethe sandhill craneshakes her beaded voice. Gauche and gangrene,she is the gatekeeper of gibe,     a cement-gray song     edged and pocked in grassyfields, a frock of scarletover her eye, her own letterto time and her maker; a bow, a leap, all a…

(A    small,    and    still    isolated,    incident    inNew York shows what can happen if authenticauthority  in social relations has broken downto  the point where  it  cannot work  any  longereven  in its derivative,  purely functional form.A  minor  mishap  in  the  subway  system—thedoors   on   a   train   failed   to   operate—turnedinto  a  serious  shutdown  on  the  line  lastingfour   hours   and   involving   more   than   fiftythousand     passengers     because     when     thetransit   authorities   asked   the   passengers   toleave the defective train, they simply…

we are not asked to see, the ridged foldsof the black walnuts, fallen, come veinedas any mind split from its skull, leachingwhat little parades as peace. Rotand wet. My right instep, sneaker’sunderneath, crushes a once greener skingone brackish at the cap. Looking up,the branches meet in an arch you canwalk under, pass through. And downthe…

Thierry I am here because it’s too crowded on the other side of this sentence.Take this page—where do I place myself? At the beginning or the end,or in the middle? Or maybe in the corner. I can’t be everywhere, that’swhat I’ve been told my entire life. They say we have a choice, but wheredo you…