Poetry

You are a wretch and a leech and a dirtyold man and have been trying to pushinside me for years. Well, come on then.There’s something about the plum warm air. Usually at this time of day I don’twant to see people. Usually when I’m onthe old swings I think about the manwho stopped his car…

It was a straw light, a blond light, a water light in the window when I looked outside and saw it was still daylight, flooding the hot, white room of her death that had been the hot, white room of her maternal loneliness. The heel of my hand hard on her sternum as her heart,…

for my mother, Veronica Cazier (1955-1991) The undertaker gripped my hand. I said I wanted Dairy Queen. I touched her cheek because I needed proof—and after, Dairy Queen. It’s what I asked for every day: to go to Dairy Queen. Worse than dead, she wasn’t quite herself. I pictured Dairy Queen. I’d finished second grade…

When I woke, makeup-smeared and sallow, everyone was gone. Greasepaint smoothin the new line of my cheek and corset-bruises on my hips, first warm day of the year. A falseeyelash settled like a moth on my collarbone. They loved me on the high wire last night in my spangled tights all done up as the…

That glass of wine suspended in airdecades ago—3D projection still a tactilememory, the ruby liquid shimmeringas if just poured into its goblet,the hands reaching out,all of us incredulous then believingbefore this chalice raised to science and art. And now in Japan, rising pop divacat girl Hatsune Miku—high-def,green-haired avatar—“sings”synthesized pop in huge stadiums,bloodless and breathlessfor thousands…

On the morning she became a young widow,my grandmother, startled by a sudden shadow,looked up from her work to see a hawk turnher prized rooster into a cloud of feathers.That same moment, halfway around the worldin a Minnesota mine, her husband died,buried under a ton of rockfall.She told me this story sixty years ago.I don’t…

I’ve watched this ultrasound so oftenI close my eyes and picture a daughter feathered with pixels,a putto’s skeleton. So here is a piece of art I own, a representationany impressionist would be proud of for it moves, though it doesn’t yetmove me. But I do return, so she has achieved what a painting wants:to be…

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…