Poetry

  • At the Moment of Beginning

    1. A cage can be a body: heart in the nightquieted slightly; mind, a stopped top.Clock spring set. Hand in motion.The fact of the hollowed nothing head. How did we come to this? Inch by inch.I was born, borrowed from the beast;I was now property in a countrywhere chain reigns—the empire city of I. 2….

  • Days of Oakland

    Now and then, you heard the copters Flying in search of inmates who’d escaped. Mostly, though, it was quiet. At night, outside, The cats would fight and fuck and knock shit down, The couple next door would simmer in heat Or bitterness. Sometimes you saw them, In the window-glass, appearing Like quarter-moons through mist. There…

  • Practice for Being Empty

    I’m only a human. Always is only in meas long as I last. What do I want? Don’t ask. We forget who we are. Conformists all alonelooking for a fake mirror and finding itin some poker nobody sitting across the aisle. To be like some other and feel that.While I am walking aroundon the only…

  • Palace

    When they run out of meat                            men disappear. I chew            my hair, a kind of fullness that is kind, a thread                            soup. A nest gathers            its strands inside me. The dead hatch, translucent-eyed,                            wire-boned, small            whistling through beaks. We share our (secret)                            feast, miles of hair to keep            us warm. I rock on my heels in the middle                            of…

  • “Before this dream…”

    Before this dream there is a blue dress, a tangle of trees and the distance between voices. There is routine sorting of like things: bank statements, unopened letters, photographs turned inward from     the damp.There are cows in clusters, truck stops, cinder block churches, scattered     tractors and fields cleared and flooded. Before this dream there is a scored…

  • Crime Scene

    You expected to see blood dripping through his clothes                                            —writing prompt from a student so you kept your distanceso you closed your eyesso you ran as fast as you couldthrough that garbage strewn alley,down that street linedwith dilapidated cars.You did not pause to considerthe wound—who or what caused it.You gave him no consideration at all.You were…

  • Waiting at the River

    Sometimes, I’m tired of being a mother, weary of holding her in my mind, her words brighter than mine, the light’s movement on the rock. Look, I say, Listen, to what my daughter said. (tired of being) reasonable and calm, answering to Mom and how sweet (the sound) my name in her mouth, her mouth…

  • 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…