Poetry

Neighbors smuggle the sunthrough tunnelsbeneath the houses.The smoke of bombsdropped from the F-16shas covered the city’s sky.

At my first history class,the only students attendingare the future, the present, and the past.As I step in, the future gets ready to leave,while the past straddles the present,handcuffing it,severing its hamstrings,and dyeing its clothes gray.

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…

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,…

After seven nights of silence, he woke to seven drawingsof a ram, pinned along his walls. Spit six seeds in a tin cup and trailed his hands along the white hallsinging about something to do with morning. My father sat his easel in the musicaland was a farmer, but wanted to be a painter. When…

What have you done?Opened this box of sound,warped like sand beneath water,remember that? The wavesof perception moving youaway from me. We grow farther apart,but we are equal in our ignoranceof how. No change there. Like celestialbodies distancing—like the animalsin autumn. How? This knowledge,how will you pin it down?How hard I look to trace the first…