Poetry

One morning the people of the capital awoke to dozens of bronze statues: in front of parliament, a horse and rider both the size of Great Danes; behind the concert hall, a waif in a tutu on a tree stump playing a huge violin. In the library lobby, a creature with a low forehead, protruding…

   My husband said he felt human again   after days of stomach flu, made himself French toast,                                        then lay down again to be sure.                      I took our daughter to the zoo, where she stood on small flowered legs, transfixed by the drone                                                          of the Howler monkey,                                        a sound more retch…

one robin, one yellow willow love braving the rain on the wrong highway— honestly, I don’t know what to think! a Canada goose, a headlong cloud Open the window! under my hand, your wet skin you looking? thirty April mornings one white tulip, one red one precise interior one persistent stem 2 cherry blossom, silver…

When I was ten (no, younger than that), my mother tried to kill herself (without the facts there can’t be faith). One death or another every day, Tanqueray bottles halo the bed and she won’t wake up all weekend. In the myth book’s color illustration, the poet turns around inside the mouth of hell to…

Shadow of a bubble. Word, my world. One: it issues from a shadow’s mouth, shadow one carries where one goes. One goes alone and two go alone. Three: without the sun, there would be no picnic. No picnic, no shadow of a bubble. No word, no world. One: it issues from a shadow’s mouth, shadow…

Everyone was happier. But where did the sadness go? People wanted to know. They didn’t want it collecting in their elbows or knees then popping up later. The girl who thought of the ponies made a lot of money. Now a month’s supply of pills came in a hard blue case with a handle. You…

The chair. The ice. The day in December when the chair was useful. Its broken seat. That, too, was what I offered up to you, but to what use. The light filled the curtains, the curtains conducted it into the room where they were talking, one standing near the chair, one smoking by the door….

It was near here. In a street similarly shining, going to the movies, and when you asked your new acquaintance, what does [sic] mean? he left off quoting The Paradiso: “sic transit gloria mundi for example,” and you felt stupid— Then the Callery pears, fruitless clouds of urban bloom stood up. Other days lit, globed…

Lately, too much disturbed, you stay breathing in me and I believe you. How could I not feel you were misspent, there by books stacked clean on glass, or outside the snow arriving as I am still arriving. If the explanations amount to something, I will tell you. It is enough, you say, that surfaces…