Poetry

  • The Queen of Truth

    If torture is the Queen of Truth then what is the King of Truth? Could it be the Black Dog, ennui, accidia, can the King rule by the weight of the ink (oh, I pray not the pixels!) on an execution order? Could the King be numbed by dum-dum fever? Could the King be a…

  • “A Field of Dry Grass”

    Osaka   Hard to imagine Basho died here in a rented room above a flower shop in 1694, as I pause today on Dotonbori Street, shoppers brushing past on either side, to gaze at the giant red mechanical crab stretching its legs over the door of the Kani Doraku seafood restaurant, its eye stalks rotating…

  • Piece by Piece

    1.          Construction When the road was not a road but a flooded mouth of broken teeth husband and wife parked at the spring-swollen dam. Above a chorus of peepers they bickered the radio news unloading their haul: soft pine, tongue, groove. They shouldered the wood under a catchpenny moon. A quarter mile down they filled…

  • Israel

    Steam lifting from the highways, ascendingto the heavens beneath the misery of commute,fires below the pavement. I have become a better driver by the standards of Houston.I will hurt somebody if they deserve to be hurt.No, OK, no, but I’m an expert in menace. All this blinding steel and glass, we’ve madethe world a brighter…

  • Often, Common, Some, and Free

    Dear, neither of us has anymoney. Let’s saywe leave that field open, as inwe don’t complete the form. I see nothing heresays it is required.Maybe this is the other kindof field. Grass, etc. That makes sense to me.Dear, neither of us has anymoney. Let’s saythere’s an Adirondack chair, the affordable plastic kind.Maybe those are rubber.Maybe…

  • Don’t Think Like the Mountains, They’re Nothing Like the Future

    If only our children were colts, and sensible enough to be good at one     thing.Running. Jumping some. Looking adorable.They would deserve our devotion.Think crepe myrtle, nudged after a brief rain. Think zealots. Think     ocean waves, if we’d enough sense to give them unique personalities.Everywhere you look, willfulness. Bountiful willfulness.And these days it’s the children you see playing…

  • (why your room has a door)

    It’s not the shore; it’s the ocean that opens. Devil, make a mountain of me for the water to dwell         against. I became aware of my      methods and the methods changed me. Soldier, you make my body a map on the floor. It’s what the door is for—         hesitation—a hand that wants to be a mouth…

  • in the blizzard

    the horses are filthy in their winter coatsgrubby and mattedmanes mended with haythey flicker between snows like medieval ordersof spiritual pilgrims; seenand invisible—unseen and realthe blizzard continues and the world is the windyour eyes close to slitsinside the drift and howlthe horses aren’t yours / not even broken to ridestill they help you get homeas…