Poetry

Forgive us, we don’t exactly believe or disbelieve What the President tells us regarding the great issues Of peace, justice, and war—skeptical, but distracted By the swarm of things. The young Romanian poet in LA Said shyly: “In Romania, bums are only bums, but here In America the bum pushes a cart loaded with his…

for Bill Handley We have only the Book of the Infinite to guide us and how we interpret its unthinkable premise:                              this life then an afterlife. At the end of his, he saw blue. I was told this. Eyes upturned drawing the sky into one extended                 remembrance of a present. I was told…

Every shadow spoke. They listened to the words until they inhabited them, had them on the tongue and in the brain, where we, who do not act, reside. In that image-making niche, they appeared to be like us: a simulacrum so perfect it hurt. They could take us in and give us out like any…

sole residue of written wisdom as actualized by things. Christ if the tulips shudder. Here the grass is rain-flattened and may not re-spring. What can one person say to another? The master is the master? The children are playing on the shore? To this language, the heron on the sandbar does not answer. Objects sought…

In the first weeks, they wanted for nothing. This is how it always is— bountiful body, ravenous laws. They watched at the curb as the horse parade passed: colorful flags, fanfare, such clapping. They called to the elderly couple across the way, raising their pale hands each morning and evening, as to an old question….

Arias, not only of voice, but as when tan grasses blow and bend yellow and pink then darken then yellow, or someone’s betrayal fills another with darkness—so I have felt my fill. At the opera this week Pagliacci— heartbreaking, sexy—lover, husband, wife, another lover scorned. The week before the town gossip: a friend having left…

                                                                        lynch not as in pin, the kind that keeps the wheels turning, and not the strip of land that marks the border between two fields. unrelated to link, as in chain, or by extension whatever connects one part to another, and therefore not a measure of chain, which in any case is…

You showed up late and angry. You shat upon the floor. With that, how could we fail to recognize you? Your father, grief’s tent show wizard, the long connected silks pouring from his sleeve. And your mother? Haven’t you known me wholly as the spider knows each tilting and imperfect room she sews to be…

I could think the novella. I could compose over time “their code, their shorthand bells.” There’s a cart and there’s a peach: two things but no ambiguity. Little Kaspar lies in the dark alone on a list with his wooden horse. Little Fred, barely able to contain his eagerness to record his experiences, rushes to…