Poetry

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…

for Sangchen Tsomo Today it looks like a radiant darkness within the body and the sound of the dove in morning and evening and how the machine of my mind is never silent and how I pray for silence like a rain cloud combed through branches. Or the dove’s slow sound above last year’s grasses….

You said yourself, if it has a mouth you mustn’t trust it. May you lose this fight. Dragging the double-blade over your leg in the shower you think of his face. Such power you found in bathing him, his tattoos—needled with guitar strings and Bic ink while others kept watch down-tier: a woman with seven…

3In hospital I convalesced and read the melodrama presented in LeFigaro: “On the morning of 16 November, it is alleged, Professor ofPhilosophy Louis Althusser strangled his wife during what has beenruled a psychotic break.” I am not psychotic, though I have indeed killedmy wife. She is dead, it’s true. Not scuttling between trap doors beneaththe…

What a reprieve from all this stultifying heat. And all the threats implicit in that heat: the sweep and snare of blackberry, razor barb of concertina wire. The bluish teasel nearly chafed you with its bracts. You’ve made it through some muck with your absolute body still intact. So far, the Camp Far West lake…