Poetry

To Yusef Komunyakaa When I rise from the bankthe water’s slow as shadowin my steps, thick as blood.The whole river’s secretive,still, dark as rouxcooled in the skillet, as rank,as sweet, ancient as catfish,ancienter. The moon’ssifted light clouds rumorto lilies or daffodils,an egret on the farther shore,a hunger, a stare, a patienceI could recite. We havewaited…

Thoughts have gone wolf again, hunting for reasons in the dark.Suppose we were never               supposed to fallinto each other’s arms? Made a bone-boattossed all our memories in—              watched it sail. There’s a chance I know nothing and I will stickto you like…

Pretend a boom box blasts over your shoulder. Raise your hands in the air. Twist them as if picking mangoes. Look to the right as if crossing streets. Look to the left, slowly as if balancing orange baskets. Bend as if picking cotton. Do the rump. Straighten up as if dropping firewood. Rake, do the…

watched a crew wipe the family namefrom the face of our supper club. The new owners slappeda cartoon moose on the sign out front. If I tell him I love him,either he is holding my little hand while we step across an icy parking lottoward a greasy burger joint or he is on his deathbedand…

So here are the strange feelings that flickerin you or anchor like weights in your eyes.Turn back and you might undo them,the way trees seem to float free of themselves as they root. A swan can hold itself on the gray ice water and not waver, an open note upon which minor chords blur and…

After Pablo Neruda This piranha in your poem,this river-missile drawn to fleshI once dangled from a fishing line.I know you won’t believe me,but when I held its flapping body to my ear,it moaned.The piranha moaned,like the medicine man moansof a riverhe believes is an anaconda,a sibilant serpentswallower of men. In turbid watersthe piranha sigh,and baring…

For every forest, there is a pig screamingout like a child as the butcher’s knife popsopen its throat. For every bucket of pig’s blood,a bucket of rainwater, saved to hydratea spring garden. For every Amish-horse-and-buggysign on a country road, a teenager exhalespot smoke into a pillow in her parents’ basement.For every time I see you…

In the stories it’s different: grief,like the dark, lifts eventually—a tenderness inside which, with allthe clarity of bells when for once theyring like nothing but the ringing bellsthey are, it can seem that at last you’ve gotten away with something, likea horse you’ve stolen that, now, lighterthan ash on a sudden wind, or any windat…

Before it’s too late—neck-     Grope this life’s most beautifulMonsters until all of this disorder Shapes sacred. Until flocks     Of balloon animals—thousandsOf them—drop from the diamond- Blue sky. Purple hippos & clownfish.     Ticks like hubcaps & backpack-Size wolves. A dancer will find A carved-in-butter replica     Of The Garden of Earthly DelightsSprawling the Landing Strip’s parking Lot. Fingerprints will cloud     The windows…