Poetry

i. I say Bora Bora. You are not to say Bora Bora. I say Bora Bora for it is one of the names of God. You are not to say one of the names of God. I— You are not able or you are not worthy. — You botch or you rot (transitive). — Botu-lizm…

There have been many— Who called in the ships— Ships in off the dark water. Instinct one minute— Satire the next—. There have been many. From one vision to the next— It is a long distance. Not just anyone can go there. You have to carry a moth through rain. You have to feign lightning….

Two bow hunters were heading out of the woods after another day without bringing back a deer, when, at a puddle in a logging road rut, tangled in some branches above it, dangling down, they spied one of those red and white fishing bobbers. “What the hell?” the first bow hunter said, but concerned that…

If this were the sea and not snow, morning- cold, Ohio, the slick, black trees standing for themselves along our ice creek, then these birds might seem ready for the flight. They’ve opened their massive wings, five, six feet across, and hold them to the cold sun as though cutting through salt winds unfettered. This…

xii. It was late May when I began the journal, a record of descents, tours of the abyss, & catalogues of blackness. One morning, I woke having dreamt I was the vehicle of aliens—no joke!—a stiff robotic self Impeccably designed to go out into our world & hunt other people. My alien Engineers had expected…

it was unusual to see children here, someone other       than a woman in a housecoat    (though it was afternoon it was after three)       or a retired officer of some sort at the apartmentsthat looked like a strip mall one was gladto have the boy and girlriding their bicycles       up and down the…

   1. Must everything be so—who are you—why bees—is this your beeping appendage—your sensation of alarm—shall I prostrate—what creed—why larynx—why sand, why a holy façade of face—why plinth and metalbone—what’s done—how does a dulcimer—what lament, what wrenching of will, why deposits into my head, why a direct line of sight over a hill— I do…

Her studious efforts to construct and maintain partitions as between varieties of touch, which appeared as the blur between affection and sexuality, were rigorous in proportion to the real absence of boundaries designated by these terms. While the contrast was not sharp, it was still painful. Like trying to pry physiology apart from feeling: once…

You with your equation, an arrow plugs your heart, half in half out makes nowhere at all. You won’t admit it but what’s left is time: a patient sponge to stop your arrow from bleeding. It isn’t more years I want, just some older days. If a day had four hours more I think I…