Poetry

  • Blackout

    New York City, August 13, 2003 All this is not unusual in DR or Iraq. The city’s extension cord shorts. Afternoon, offices evacuate. The focus is on feet, some people walking through boroughs for the first time. We stare at our feet, elbow to elbow eyeing packed buses. Some hitch rides on the back of…

  • Blackouts

    rolled through the city. Whoever has an answer won’t last. Traffic muscles through. Whole families lazing on steps eating grapes. “No I’m not,” says the youngest to her canary. “You grew into your legs, Tall One, didn’t you.” Then no one. Loosed papers flatten the fences. Bits of glass rest there and burn. This part…

  • Sutures

    I had torn the quads in both legs and had to be poured into the back seat so when we parked at Home Depot, I was being slid out on a plastic sheet when a red sports car pulled in next to us, the door swung open and a hand cast out a folded wheelchair…

  • New England Slate Pane

    Mom has already made arrangements for a spot inside the churchyard wall among the old Yankee slates, some fallen, and the granites from foreign places, tilted by frost. A mason sets them straight again each spring. Perennials for the formal beds accepted with gratitude; no other plantings allowed. Cut flowers may be laid on the…

  • Bat

    You’d think he was nervous the way he fits and starts. His skittery dodges, dipping below the visible, make us wait           for a scratch on our eye which comes to show he’s gone again elsewhere. How does he find his way? you said, and I saw night close in           like a room with…

  • Some Writers in Wartime

    What is essential as breath reduced to a squabble about moral parity to hold a brief for the party that orders death. Moral parody: ours is but to cook, serve, clear, speak when spoken to. * We will not swell the glory chorus, slaughter calling to slaughter like lovers possessed. Nor will we turn away….

  • What the Therapist Said

    Just because you think a man is dead doesn’t mean you should leave him. Really, the dead have a lot of advantages over the living. Think about your dad. How much better you get along with him now that he’s passed. It’s time’s way. And why in the end everything turns out okay. A lot…

  • Bread and Butter

    In 1936, when a tramp knocked on the farmhouse door and asked, please, for bread and butter, Kate hacked him a slice from the loaf she baked last Wednesday, and spread on it the Holstein butter she churned Saturday morning. He thanked her, Ma’am, and walked down the road looking for Help Wanted, for a…