Poetry

1. They sleep on their shadows,long for no one,their speech drifts weightlessthrough 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 onflirting with death. You and I are two,I…

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

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 walk past once in the gathering…

His beard’s still dark but a little grayer. I, too, have a gray hair or twotwisting through the dark ivy between my legs. Honestly, I’m surprisedhe recognizes me standing up. He looks well, fit, his smile as generousas I remember, all those times on my back staring up at a faded pictureof hot air balloons…

          Sometimes, we let ourselvesbelieve we’re talking to his ghost. Sometimes, we think memory, its rhyme.          How long can you stay           afloat? my sister askswhen 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 down a job in years.          He’s…

Where are the flying starsof my childhood? Evenings litlike a glitterball’s sparkle againstthe night’s dim walls. Their absenceis like aging: one less pulse each year. I want my childhood of darknessbedazzled again with shards of light—my tiny lighthouses, my suburbs of surprise—where the shadows of dogwoodsand crepe myrtles wink at me.Tell me I’ll never be…

When she comes to take youaway she asks if your ringcomes off. You twist and twist. Yousurrender. Celeste saysit will come off later. In those next hoursso many doors open,none of them returning you to me. A manin the atrium belowplays piano— an ambling, jazzy, winespritzer. Noiseto fill the void. I’ve already forgotten her face,…

A mast year for acorns, so like marbles and so manywe’re afraid of falling. I walk sideways down the hill, holding a long stick; Kate goes before mewearing her orange knit cap. Everything alive is changing. Everythingun-alive is changing. What did we think to stop? The broken trees lean on the unbroken trees,which will one…

So, I’ve grown less apparent apparently:the young men walk their dogs, and when our dogs meetwe look at the dogs without raising our eyes to each other. The fathers stand outside the elementary school laughingwith the mothers—Exactly, one of them says to the other—my passing presence faded like a well-washed once-blue cotton shirt. Finally, I…