Poetry

i. Do they hate each other, I wonder, she who will live on and he who is dying? I fill their bird feeder with safflower. Each dip of the orange pitcher scatters seed from its lip to the earth, in ecstasy. An arc. A small rain falls down. Bruised light a nacre over everything. My…

See my colors fall apart? Green to yellow with just one shade gone, the changing tints of your sun-struck eyes, if there were sun. Today the prism held to mine’s   a prison, locking in the light. In one of those mirrors the colors are true. In one of these pictures the pigment’s my own….

My favorite God a horse the color of my name. And when I ride him, a heat between my legs, like tongue on ice, friction of moon against darkness. Over and over, the hooves, the rain, finding the ground. Hearts, black boots flung there in the mud behind us. And all around us, the leaves…

The muscular hollows: eye, lung, heart, stomach, hand. The parts that you enliven: lips, hair, spine. The necessary and cleansing wastes— sweat, blood, urine, stool, and sperm. But certain places of my body are not specified or named until reached by the first unexpected drop of rain, or the careless, accidental touch of your fingernail….

The Roosevelt Mineral Baths Do you believe the proof is not in the body? In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, John walks among the olive trees by the river, looking for the women who will let him touch their faces with his hands. At night in the park I unwind the…

I can hear the rain now, its vanishing averted glance, and long branches descending softly toward cool water. And then a voice coming back from its solitude to find me, “When nothing spoke to me anymore the broken statues spoke to me,” and “Be opened my mouth, untie what is upon my mouth.” I have…

Then came the day even as the water glass felt heavy and I knew, as I’d suspected, I grew lighter. I grew lighter, yes. Say, have you ever fainted? Such a distinct horizon as you are raised above your pain, like Chekhov’s, and it was clear to them the end was still far off ….

1968: For you, sitting in a barracks in Okinawa, the war is over. You are quiet, as if experiencing silence for the first time. You don't know what to do. Stare at your hands. From the barracks sergeant you obtain the name of a place where you can be washed and massaged. You go there…

Steal your sister's presents. Swallow pieces, ride her bike, ride it far into the grove. Show her you've discovered all her holy spots and watch her try to find another, deeper forest: everything she's kept from you is yours now: these frilly private things, this tiny book of screams.