Poetry

Valium, Librium, and Tylenol with codeine—that’s what Velma           the head nurse at the Florida House of Representatives would dish out when you came in with your period, a hangover,           a cold, a broken arm, a hangnail. She called it the Triple,as in It sounds like you need a Triple or That calls for a Triple.          God,…

Your grandfather and I walk alike,each of us counting the brittle spacesin getting older. At the desk I explainI want to see my son, and I see youare now digits on a sheet. Blackmen in black—the brothers—make sureyou obey the rules. It is like the timesI had to come to school to get youfor being…

When I saw her in her urban kitchen—thin and smart in her charity-shop green dress—a glass wall was between uspolished spotless with some soft cloth of mistrust.All winter she’d lived up the hillin the gray house with the damp walls,the rains fading the fields. The snow—its ice-floe memories of Riga, darkness, home. The nights we’d…

Then the Great Dane becamean arrow of smoke in a wind pipe of smoke, so I had to burnthe body. He’d always considered himself king of infinite dominions:king of the bone, king of the living room, king of the elevator, kingof the field. The ashes I scattered in a park close to home, in casethere…

Why are people wearing antlers in the hospital cafeteria?—Because it’s Christmas, silly. Can’t you hear the sleigh bellsdrifting down like pesticide from all the hidden speakers? Mr. Johansson says he doesn’t get paid                         enough to wear a Santa hat,but everybody else just goes along with it. It’s winter, the elevators ding, the stunned relatives get off…

The Tartars say: After the wedding, we don’t need the music. And in Yiddish it is said: It’s the last one whom the dogs attack. The Italians say: The last to arrive must shut the door. The English say: The last suitor wins the maid. They also say: No one has ever seen tomorrow. Spaniards…

After I finally got over my sense of being a character in a book, and the innocence had gradually drained out of me                                    through the holes life punctured in my container, that’s when I finally had time to stoop down and look closely at the dry, exhausted-looking grass                   next to the sidewalk, blowing back and forth all…

In the endthere is alwaysa little changein the pockets,a few suns and moonsyou couldn’t spend. Nearbythe cloudof a would-be breathdoesn’t move,reprieved but useless. This candle will change all that. Use the last bit of air for light, and heat the hand that shields the eyes and face when it getstoo close or bright. No one…

When I change lanes on I-70 North toward the St. Louis airport, my father points to my sideview mirrors and asks how I like them angled. He tells me he keeps his tilted to show only a trace of his car, a shadow, enough to see where it ends and the asphalt picks up.And while…