Poetry

Reminds me of early winter—field dressed, dangling from a porch girder like an upside-down garland of roses, no longer animal or drifting hole in a snow-blazed moor. How is it the body knows it deserves the ground before the clouds? The noose almost giving in? Suddenly thawed, dropped in its own shadow, held: un-mothered, sucked…

El Negro de Banyoles tugged the hemof his orange loincloth to save Europefrom shame. Storm clouds darkened the gallery skylights. Bruegel’s blind man led a parade of blind men into a ditch as a student sketched a copy at her easel. After the war, Vietnamese beat cradles, tools,and kettles from spent artillery shells.We might define…

Yep. She fell running across the open space.It wasn’t her fault. It’s just One more thing that happened. Knee bleeding,She wouldn’t get picked for the team. None of us understood, of course.We stood there, looking and looking. I’ve read that in this earth we bring forth windAs if soughing, that we are not our own…

Near the end of the course, in that part of the hourReserved for questions, a silence fell on the classWhen the girl who’d been quiet all semesterRaised her hand to ask if anyone there besides herBelieved in heaven. An embarrassed silenceWhile each of us wondered why she hadn’t chosenTo go to the Bible college just…

I am the only man in the worldbecause I have no tits. I havea permanent hard-on as long as I am tall and itoutweighs me.                                       They say that Ihave horns, hooves, and a tail, but thisis a myth or a lie: my foreheadis knobbed, my coccyx is protuberant,and my toes are flanged.                                                  Mostpeople run away when I…

You wander into my thought,my happiness, the way the deerwander through the yard these days, very relaxed, with no thought of being hunted,browsing the bushes near the drivewaylike people at the refreshment table of an art opening… That’s how you come over me—not with a burst of wings,but with that slow, presumptuous air of entitlement,as…

What am I doing, trudging around Natick, Massachusetts,so archetypal in its split-level, clapboard ordinariness,one house after another like a crowd gathered haphazardlyat an accident site? And why explore the deafeningblandness of the little streets with fenced-in yards,where day after day—iPod loaded with arias—Ti prego, rubami il cuore!—I wheel the baby, who will not quietunless she’s…

You have been away too long.For pleasure. On business.You are coming home and the almanacpredicts heat waves, hurricanes,other unlikelihoods. The old barin our town is serving seven cocktailsfor the price of six. The deck is open.Pleasure. You are coming homewith your pregnant girlfriendwhom no one has met. The babywill be named Bullet or Hunter or…

Growing up, there were always two laws.My mother, the greater, the greatestWho made enemies if necessary outOf the trashman or the paperboy.Queen without her court and details,Commands so precise, you could notFollow if you were not one of her students;If you did not know her nobility you mightThink she was crazy in her house dressStanding…