Poetry

  • 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…

  • Song of Myself

    after Issa I think it’s enough just to sit and meditate, heedlessof the needs of others close to us and oftheir perpetual demands that seem to sap thestrength from us. My doorway and the morning deware all I need to make my day, and thatis where I’ll plan to be. And if that marksme misanthropic,…

  • House of Wigs

    The sky was low. His head was a vase ofsorrows he wanted to fill with blossoms.He stepped into the House of Wigs. The saleslady said, “Try this one on. It’s calledthe Mind of Fire. It turns ashes into flame.Prometheus was wearing it, they say, whenhe was punished by the Gods for his compassionand he barely…

  • Reunion

    And shall we describe the beautiful bike?It was a beautiful color the beautiful bike.What ever happened to the beautiful bike?The beautiful bike rode off into the beautiful sunset.Not by itself, surely. Who was pedaling the beautiful bike?You, you were the one pedaling the beautiful bikelast seen disappearing into the beautiful sunset. Now I remember the…