Poetry

A missing tooth and a fang. A bloom and a sandstorm. A love letter and a trapdoor. A can opener and a kiss. A maraca and a spear. Lowered eyes and a suddenly somewhat disconcerting blow job. A baroque flute flourish and an eerie silence just beyond the     cabin door. A tube top and…

In the morning my neighbor walks onto his deck and looks out, some days in a yellow jacket, some days in a raincoat, some days in a shirt. The house is far enough off I do not know his name, cannot quite see his face. I would not know him in line at the grocery….

The dark and heavy coat she always wore hid From her as much as anyone What grew her belly out one thought at a time. And she who did not know her body, Who was surprised to feel it Created with some boy she’d barely met, Ignored the word so much a shock She was…

don’t leave the tent delirious and starving in the blizzard makes more sense in hindsight through the howls of distant seals the ruined captain wanders off arctic exploration is no fun makes more sense in hindsight also don’t sleep with her or don’t take the red ones or don’t let the bees escape I took…

—after the slaying of thirty-eight children at the church wall of Candelária The women would come in Chevrolets with soup in tins for the children. The women would come in Chevrolets, tin within tin, for the children. The children nearly sleepwalk in the exhaust. They are lost dragging their blankets through the long pepper fog…

translated by Ralph Angel to Manuel Torres, “Niño de Jerez,” who has the body of a Pharaoh Portrait of Silverio Franconetti Between Italian and flamenco, how would that Silverio have sung? The thick honey of Italy, mixed with our lemon, flowed through the deep wail of his siguiriya. His cry was terrifying. The old folk…

Paper boat on a dark stream— Put a candle inside the boat and let that stand for woman, and let the water stand for man. Downstream the willow lets down her green tresses. The water sings as it moves, inexorable, past the banks sodden and rank with mud. The candle makes a chapel of light….

after the Gawain poet Like Jonas by the fish was I received by it, swung and swept in the dark waters, driven to the deeps by it and beyond many rocks; the winds on the one water wrestled together. Without any touching of its teeth I tumbled into it and without more struggle than a…

Was I the last one waiting? Epochs passed, tides tossed the island twice each day, sometimes a lazy shushing, sometimes violent—then tides would frighten me, countdown clocks striking off the muzzy days and nights. Mosses grew around me—pin cushion, pale shield, old man’s beard. One gray day, walking on the sand, I found a wooden…