Poetry

                            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…

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…

As for the fly I chased around the bathroom with a towel that night,         swatting, slapping, thrashing, pounding, kicking with one foot the toothbrush cup onto its side, dislodging the         tea curtain with a misplaced elbow, unable for all my efforts to terminate his gallant loops and arabesques,         his beeline dives and fighter-pilot vectorings, his…

I’m a cipher. Before that, I was a loose cannon. Before that, I was a zealot. I preached on the street corners. I accosted strangers in subways to tell them I had good news for them. Before that, I worked on the assembly line in a fireworks factory. I stuck fuses in firecrackers and poured…

That story I told you about suffering Was a lie. I never wandered into The woods with a pack of matches. Truth is I was born there, and there I ran the weather. Deer left Apples in my hand, so I didn’t think To cook the deer. The secret of my Life was my life,…

at your marker (they call it a marker) a footstone hipper than headstones           earlier mapquest led to metro north           google to the most reliable cab service in peekskill I bring wheat      tall dry half-live stalks           bought the day before           (new york has everything)           no one questions the harvest shooting from…

I’m only leaving you for a handful of days, but it feels as though I’ll be gone forever— the way the door closes behind me with such solidity, the way my suitcase carries everything I’d need for an eternity of traveling light. I’ve left my hotel number on your desk, instructions about the dog and…

May replace passport photos. Often the subject is at rest, Isolated from a group, or otherwise Imagined as an individual More than the sum of a series of quirks (“Reality effects”) The poems generally are forced To jettison run-of-the-mill data The ideal such description Will give you a sense Of how someone’s eyes flash When…

Maybe your baby done made some other plans. —Stevie Wonder Out of a cinched sack of bones, the dog’s half-cast opiate eyes ask can’t you hear the moths, pelting the pear glass? & then there is nothing else I can hear, bulbs opal and ignited as felted anus-stars of snow spot the porch, blast the…