Poetry

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…

When the sun broke up the thunderheads, and dissonance was consigned to its proper place, the world was at once foreign and known to me, that was shame leaving the body. I had lived my life from small relief to small relief, like a boy pulling a thorn from his foot. Wet and glistening, twisting…

In the church, midweek at noon,there is a middle distancebetween the piercing bluewindow of pure beliefand the bone vault housingmy heart’s disbelief, a dimyielding distance relatedto my prayer: another day’sdelay before you are nowhere—for death fixes all distances                                like a new nail.

Thirty-six years till my mother is bornThe perfumes she worewhen she was young    whatever happened The bottom of her jewelry drawercalls and calls as I run her through her first school playShe doesn’t understand Stroke my stomach    mother    till I understand Why is the movie too advanced?Why do we have to stay home and chase…