Poetry

  • Secret Fellow Sufferers,

                                 I’ve come a long way to the pulpit today to advance our causes: No more coal-mine canaries. Abolish Susan Jeffries who teases Max Biggins who sits on the seesaw and cries and cries. May she admit she wants to marry him; may the foremen confess that oft in the dark and brute weight of their…

  • The Ark by “Scratch”

    The genie says build a studio. I build a studio from ash. I make it out of peril and slum things. I alone when blood and bullet and all Christ-fucking-’Merican-dollar politicians talk the pressure down to nothing, when the equator’s confused and coke bubbles on tinfoil to cemented wreath. I build it, a Congo drum,…

  • Secret Fellow Sufferers,

                                have you been the unwinged thing perched and testing the phone-wire’s teeter? Have you weighed the big Pro against the many feath’ry Cons? Have you watched the brows of standers-below as they fell into wish from honest worry? Sometimes the wind off the lake sounds like a siren approaching your rescue, instead of the air…

  • Why I Write Poetry

    Because my son is as old as the stars Because I have no blessings Because I hold tangerines like orange tennis balls Because I sit alone and welcome morning across              the unshaved jaws of my lawn Because the houses on my street sleep like turtles Because the proper weight of beauty was her eyes              last…

  • Penance

    I offer upthis flowerbox my skull dear whomeverlet its luxuriance exceed its basenesslet me curl in the blueblackroot hairs and wait for youwind in my teeth will sough sweetly

  • 50 Ways

               I can turn the space of him over in my hands. See if it comesapart, if it’s permeable. Does it keep time, shrink, dissolve on flesh. Does it bounce. Can I back that thing up. Can I see if it stands, if it cutscorrectly. If it can clothe me.    If I can I swallow it.               …

  • The Suspect

    On a factory floor I felt for my keys. It was eight o’clock by the clock on the stall. (I meant to write wall) The tiles were one foot by one foot and sea foam green spoke the little shroud over the letters above the drill room door. Once it was useful to think of…

  • Cartography

    I’m dumb about the world. To me, it always looks haunted, impoverished—especially in snow, which returns it to black and     white. And sometimes I look and see nothing— but the elementary smoke rising from a human village, overpopulated, and yet undermade. A woman from there is walking along the side of     the road to the next village…

  • Lines on the Pathetic Fallacy

    The hurricane’s advance team of breezes administers a poll to my oak trees. The author, having scented disaster, having been awake for hours, advises his trees not to answer. Telephones trill on nightstands, requiring weary authorities to sit on the edges of their beds with their heads in their hands as instructed by disaster movies….