Poetry

  • Pieta

    —for Richard McCann At first it was unacceptable—strangers dressed in black,walking away or toward a holein the ground, each a versionof you. Seven hundred reasonsto dig holes in the earth—somelook for water, some need afence. Some for this seed,some for that body. my God,your body. When you died Ididn’t cry or even think of it…

  • Cut

    When the home-aid nurse comesto check on my mother’s drainage tubeI am sharpening my kniveswith my new Bavarian edge. When I hear the nurse say proximityto the toxin, I entertain the thoughtthat disease might be seenas a measure of intimacy. A knife is my favorite kitchen helper.Come a little closer.Look here at what iswanting near….

  • Self-Portrait with IUD Failure

    What you snuck past: a vast copper body, two plastic hands all the better to twist you from this empty palace. You are not yet  who you will be, little sac of yolk, blood clot drifting through. What should we do with you who bedded down in a field  of red clover? You want  a piece of cake, meat silky and tender, slipping free  from the bone. You want my voice echoing into…

  • THE HOLIDAYS

    The old city rushes into me as soon as the planedescends, and my drunk bravado shudders.I swear to myself that I will not confrontmy family with my suffering this time around.I’ll be a civilized person instead and keeplongstanding resentment to myself. Even the partof me that is gristle and nerve is strangelyquiet. The dot dot…

  • LEFTOVERS

    When I needed a Barden bumper for my bumper-less truck, I walked through a junkyard: bolts & gauges on the ground, wheels rolling nowhere or steering nothing, dead headlights illuminated by sunbeams. A bird alit on chrome. I shivered at the delicacy of what I could not see: a laugh & This is my favorite…

  • POEM

    You will never finish your lifethe way you intended.The bed you will never get up fromis not the one you wanted,by a lake or river’s edgewhere the light toucheseach bird awakeexcept the onethat kept watch all night.