Poetry

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…

Everything recedes With such grand effort. A morsel On the winter palace floor. In the trees Up ahead, a light goes out, asleep In her summer arms. Hate is born As a monument to our inattention and the blind Greed of disbelief. Even the heroin addict has more Conviction, morbidly patient with his addiction. Work,…

It is so and so and not the dusty worldwho drops. It is their mother and not the dusty worldwho drops them. Why I imagine her so oftenempty-handed as houseboats’ distant lightsrise and fall on the far ripples—I do not know. I know that darkness.Have stood on that bridgein the space between the streetlightsdizzy with…

but don’t read this poem whose title implies I think you’re old but youare at least older than me time passing makes everyone old unlessdeath and I don’t want that which is not to say I’m terrified but don’tnot read this poem because you’ve died! I’d rather insult you what Imean is—oh look! I think…

César Vallejo, Arago Clinic, Paris, Holy Friday April 15, 1938 It was you, César, they killed to the base of your forefinger, you. Certainly they shot Pedro Rojas too. No doubt Juana Vasquez was killed. The killers, poor also, were skilled. And Emilio, they shot him, in the back of the neck, after they made…