Poetry

Candles

after Cavafy   Flickering above the pink rosettes and your name iced in ivory buttercream, a bouquet burns on top of your cake, fifty blossoms of flame. One candle equals a year of your life, plus one more to wish on. Hurry, make a wish, blow them out! They’re out. Now cut the cake. But…

Worm, (to a rumor of lilies)

Ach—the gravitas of the hunt. I. Digestive turned blue so the woman said. Said, I write my own islands, and red, red. Was urinary.            Under the astigmatic lens of her naked eye she followed the tracts. Looking at worms for a long time she said A worm in its lifetime moves short distances. She knew…

Cypress Knees

Some name them knees, those roots of the cypress trees in that murky swamp, rising up out of the water, though their legs beneath them, the feet, the toes, even the bodies down there at the mud’s bottom still haven’t shown up yet. So far, it’s only those bold knees that point the way. Some…

Last Class

Thus what we’ve learned is that our greatest poets were death-obsessed loners who seldom enjoyed the pleasures of lovers despite living in a constant state of sexual excitation. They started as revolutionaries and atheists, or they went to Harvard and voted Republican and mowed the yard. The night sky was starry and told them stories….

Old Men and Laundromats

After the initial terror of laying out your clothes in front of everyone, it’s where to put the money, the clothes before water or the detergent first or in between the clothes. Your fingers find the quarters, slip them into slots, push and listen to the water, vaguely familiar, like your heart between the covers…

Double Elegy, With Curse

Reagan dead this Saturday the last—     the falsifying mind cratered,     the brain that was a salt block America loved to lick— but Ray Charles struck down yesterday outlasts him by three days forever now—     the basic blues chord     a power of the arisen— to the Lord’s child betrayed by lightless waves…

People Walking in Fog

They try to watch themselves, drifting in a white sigh, the boats and trees, and themselves, too, when they think of it, spun from sheets of gauzy droplets with which to tar the morning white and walk upon it. The horizon yawns. The earth is liquid. They can feel it, and not just it but…

Talk About Failure

Well, there’s the lack of vacuuming, carrot juice spills on the ivory couch, dust running along the floorboards like a pet, veiling the TV, sills, the furnishings of books, shoes without glue, the lack of comfortable seating or dining, the canopy I gave away, childhood desk sold, gold chair left in a spidery garage, rose…