Poetry

The hotter the sun the whiter the bloom,             my grandmother used to say of the dogwoods,             Christ’s trees, still bearing his blood, and our hearts, of course,                                     in need of redemption. On her cue, I’d wield a bowl of potato peels             out past the barn to the hog pen             where…

for Robert Philen I saw all these things the moment contained (what the light proposed), a camellia bush in thick red bloom all January, some flowers browning on the dormant lawn (still green): they smelled like something afternoon; wax baskets of evergreen mistletoe hung from bare limbs of a southern red oak, verdant parasite on…

Syringes, ampoules, feathers, finger foods, driftwood, A purple sheen on the water, obscene eddies, mud on the banks     and pine nests. This morning I saw another omen: there’s always something,     usually just one thing, An egret or an ibis. But it’s the things in conjunction that make meaning. Five days ago there was…

I left my house of silence and wrecked my body on the beach of travel. An ocean of bus lines, planes with twin engines, and rubber balls that tumble down stairwells. The road chooses women with shopping bags and greasy faces. It pushes them toward the distance of gas stations and beer stands. Because she…

I. What appears untidy and lacking in design is in fact intentional: quiet milkweed beside the conflagration of red fireweed; the brackish Schuylkill feeding stately oaks. John knew the author lays his borders, then steps back. General Washington, strolling the overgrown river trail, pursed his lips; what sort of father lets his seed run wild,…

Every November 21, I take my mother to the cemetery to visit my father, a man who knew little of joy or the good life, and my mother kneels, says a prayer right there where the lip of his headstone begins, and I know her knees will hurt, but she stays, eyes closed, trying to…

My birthplace is incidental. Never forget your Mother Country. Our town was nowhere, nothing but dirt. Our village was known for its temples and ponds. The way my mother ran the house was backwards. You don’t taste fish like that here. I don’t remember what my father said. We memorized everything our father said. Chinese…

When hope forms a bud of prayer, who picks it? Words in all languages yearn toward the stars, confessing and beseeching. I talk to a masculine higher power half god, half human. When he sits calm and golden, spine straight as the Buddha’s, my own spine yearns upward toward the clean sky of his face….

Love not the rider but the old rider, the ghost in the saddle: Obey that ghost. A good horse runs even at the shadow of the whip. But we are not good horses. We bolt. We stand still in bad weather. We rely on things we know are unreliable, it feels so good just to…