Poetry

  • Bolero

    Not the ratcheting crescendo of Ravel’s bright winds but an older, crueler passion: a woman with hips who knows when to move them, who holds nothing back but the hurt she takes with her as she dips, grinds, then rises sweetly into his arms again. Not delicate. Not tame. Bessie Smith in a dream of…

  • Luck

    In spite of what we know about the millionth chance, whose lessons on statistics prove our lives will glint unchanged from month to month, we scrape gold tinfoil off the quick picks, shove half-dollars in the one-armed bandits, move to cities where new money rings a bell. Our self-renewing visions of a trove though toxic…

  • The Uppercase Motions

    The uppercase motions sustained their forms of cruelty. I tried to delineate fictions, But the math of things was small. It did not give me room to take my cup. It did not give me room to speak an answer. In the diluted sunlight, a world rolled off. I barely recognized the sinking myth. It…

  • Break

    In the middle of the hunt, I must excuse myself, and all through silent polished halls feel the dog-breath on my sling-back heels. Being flesh, being always hungry, I mostly swallow what is thrown. But am not glutton, but furnace burning punishments. And know the protocol for butchery, but cannot call it to my mind….

  • An After-Dinner Speech

                                         loquitur:                 Anton Raphael Mengs                                               Court-Painter elect to                                               Charles III of Spain Signori, you have my gratitude for the signal honor of this banquet, the learned discourses,                    as well as, of course, the great distinction of your company. “Old Mengs,” you call me among yourselves, and it is true: I am                   …

  • Last Draft of the Day’s Light

    Not wilderness exactly open country a wooded valley and the river in it waterfall and towpath footbridge     lockhouse a canal that runs to Cumberland beside the Potomac     not wilderness     you know that bounded parkland with your neighborhood above it stage set by some Luminist where you describe the hour     convinced no calendar can register a…

  • St. Francis at the Fire

    Sludge heart. Pot-metal heart. Scree . . . Some leaves fell. Schlock heart. Chil- blain heart. Piss-stain heart. Gelded heart. O heart incontinent. 24-carat electro-plate heart. Cicadas were silent. Bumper-sticker heart. Foul-mouth stink-bomb heart. Black. Black. Black. And I sang all day. Drop-dugged wolf- bitch heart. And held birds in my hands. Thistle heart. Briar…

  • Atonement

    What happened to sweet heat, the sneezeweed, the luna moth and gingham sleeve, sipped Slurpies and reedy kayaks, the sponge-bathed trees? Why are the nights so flustered and furrowed, dusks crimped by crooked V’s of snow geese bored with palmettos? Why does the full moon pinprick the draft, neurotic winds reentering therapy, the light, an…