Poetry

April

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…

Orpheus Plays the Bronx

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…

The Chair

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….

Other Symposia

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…

Apology

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…

Introduction to Disease

Call me Responsible.                                    (Like all of them                                    it loves an exam.) Pleased to meetcha. A charming living space.                                    Thank you.                                    All original, naturally. Tongue?                      Not telling. (Funny little factory.)                                    I know my diagnosis.                                    Friendlier than the world.                                    Friendlier than the world. Well do yourself a favor they say…

Dear Rome

Sometimes I touch the cleaner. Sometimes an hourly vole shares the bed and wife with me. Once I sat up suddenly and spoke it: crowned platelets inherit the passenger bin. I believe the precise moment of Rapture is felt not to occur, the Rind of Incidence I made up in the first place. On a…