Poetry

It is hard to remember about the hardening man he is alive, hard not to hear in the shrill nonsense he speaks when he attempts to speak the chirping of a thrush, any ordinary bird hard to see (but look) beneath his sagging mask a face, once flesh, now lost, a planet— barren and featureless…

Not sibylline but clear, empty weather; of the eight kinds of sky it was the milk-paled potion most like a cup of coffee she poured past full in such a way as to show herself how good she was, how the liquid lolled just over the white cup’s rim, just so the instant before an…

from The Jade Buddha: A Sequence In the midst of a life, out by the propane tank, by the stacked timbers, while magpies kept up their quizzical cat-like calls in the piñons— a little threatening, their small part in the large thinking of the planet, their part to be clever and quick, seasonal marauders at…

I loved one person do you see the evergreen there in fog     one by one I was taught to withdraw first from him do you want to     know how the mind works under extreme cold ice forming on the     eyelid or wind thrown at me I felt every needle felt every breath…

for Taha Muhammad Ali and for Aaron Shabtai From nothing but his fear, and kiss her cunning brows Who braves the risen salar, daughter’s bursting ripeness Moaning through the sash, he marries to a settler The crown sits on his head, to hold her as he wants For him the dead king’s wife, in a…

The shame of an idea is in its seriousness, a conqueror’s     seriousness, shameful the way it surveys the landscape of remains, laying claim to the vast ruined view and each surviving privacy     alike, claiming its own pure force as the origin of things, seizing even the moonlight on the leaves of half a…

In one film, a man turning the pages of a book. In another film, a man turning the pages of a book. Outside, the snow and the semis cover everything with mud and someone talks to someone else. The snow creaks like an old floor. Inside, the paper weighs the same as the inside of…

Call me What You Will. This for your complicated hands— my best mechanical tree. Test?                                  No thank you. Question?                           The rivers run in circles. You noticed.                       We noticed. (thinking) Duet!                                  & the pin factory . . . Sweet extrovert, it is making pins. You will, you know, but I shouldn’t sing              Introvert! Introvert! if I…

Asking     Carrying a bucket full     Of a broken window or     Watching people and their mirrors on     TV; the woods tamped down     By snow and the very high iron of trees;     Air passes from purple to blue into     Black pitched lower than trees;     Glass for this     Half-week….