Poetry

Elegy

Was it madness that enabled you to fall into the ocean— if you were “dancing” on the rocks as I’ve been told, it could have been loss of balance—we say that of the mad don’t we, I can see each taunting lift of foot, the bitten hands flailing, I can, off East Haven more than…

Hymns to Poseidon

1. They sleep on their shadows, long for no one, their speech drifts weightless through their lanes. Gold thread, fistfuls of barley, a jar of Aristaeus’s gold, an old woman’s needle, her pearly lace lining the harbor road. Taxis for Darnis awaiting passengers, Sudanese farmhands milling about, and into the bay, the sponge pickers go…

Notre-Dame

Like a pomegranate, I wore my garnets quietly. Nude lip, beige tongue. I took the shape of clouds passing by. I was a tool for divination—you used me to find water & blamed me when I drank. We dreaded you together. Still, I kept my smile on, even when you hid the key to my…

La Rochelle

Just there, deep in shadow, the peeling paint of an old door to a carriage                     house behind untrimmed cypress branches, a shade somewhere between turquoise and navy wrung by rain to                     namelessness, a color we can no longer locate on the spectrum, the lost blue of tenderness                     and sorrow overlain with exaltation, a door we…

Speaker Phone: Our Father, the Great Plains

          Sometimes, we let ourselves believe we’re talking to his ghost. Sometimes, we think memory, its rhyme.           How long can you stay           afloat? my sister asks when he admits to paying his ex-girlfriend’s rent again. He doesn’t care           that she’s seeing other men           and avoids his calls— doesn’t care that he owes back-taxes and hasn’t held…

Lightning Bug Ode

Where are the flying stars of my childhood? Evenings lit like a glitterball’s sparkle against the night’s dim walls. Their absence is like aging: one less pulse each year. I want my childhood of darkness bedazzled again with shards of light— my tiny lighthouses, my suburbs of surprise— where the shadows of dogwoods and crepe…

Etymology of Definition

DEFINE, meaning “the degree of distinctness in outline of an object, image, or sound,”           sound being some motion invisible to the eye, progenitor to an empire of echoes,           although empire implies dominion, a definition demanded from its subjects,           all of whom are subject to their own purpose, “one that may be acted upon,”           which is…