Poetry

The sun was nothing more than an orangethe day Lisa ran for the ice cream truck.It was small and even if it held sweetness,even if it seeped Vitamin C, it couldn’t stopthe car from barreling down Mott Avenue,couldn’t shine enough to show the driver the eight-year-old girl dashing in front of his Pontiac so that…

I go around and turn the pages—the newestnews—for the paralytics on the porch.At least the day isn’t hot yet. So saysonly a gleam in an old man’s eye. A beezeroes in for the kill. I roll the ladiesto the shady side. No one wants wordof war. They go for a strangled baby on page three,continued…

When I decide to go to hear Handel’s Messiah in London          at the composer’s parish church, my husband sayshe’d rather see a Thai horror movie, so we plan to meet later          at our favorite Moroccan lair that serves huge platters of olives and fried goat brains, but here I am sitting in the pew           next to the…

do you remember that bumyou ran into in the bathroom of the Radissonwashing himself with a rag his clothes in a pilein the corner he must have been in his sixtiesall smiles and still retarded by his father’s rageoh this man he said the things he didto me and my mother you wouldn’t believethey made…

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…

in terms ofdesign onebox is coloredorange the one you wantedalways is andsits in the bathroomof anyone’shouse causethat’s whatshe wantsit’s choosingthat wakes thingsup I wondered howlong allthat I needed and encounteredherewould come like a wavenot the shakebut the aftereffectsand this boxdid saythere was a wayto see thisthinga-loneJuly calledit calculuswhat iscomes in boxeswhat is notcomes in wavesthe…