—worth it? My soul looks back and wonders how I left behind that tether, which, a burden so long, had become a life more true than my memory of having been without it: a friend saying, “I love you, but not enough,” then never trying toward enough or letting me go. The…
Objects heavy enough to break us hang from the thinnest of threads. A stray breeze and down they come. But they say that spider silk is five times stronger than steel, which might be why spiders look so buff. I know that I wouldn’t want to run into one in a dark alley, or any…
Maybe on the shore of the lake where eagles live and breathe again, swooping over toddlers frightening all, I sought a rock that was flat, one to skip over the calm surface of the water to impress the child. And maybe the rock had fallen from another planet, tumbled, burned itself …
Translated by Ming Di With the key of paintbrush he opens another door; he asks a flower to invite people to a waltz. Light dazzles the dance floor. To the other end of the realm of dreams he captures the poet John Giorno, sleeping. What game is it, what strangeness, that experiences time? What is…
Translated by Heather Green VI what do you know the air has come unstuck from us we are here without stars what do you know without money without fire a sweaty dog in his kennel and rain under the armpits what do you know about it the noise lies and dies with each…
Imagine yourself a sequoia, down to the roots, El Niño shaking the leaves. You want to say invade instead of shake, but that doesn’t feel safe. Roots like those, they stay in the earth: so keep your breath visual. Paint until it feels right, even if Oregon smoke floats across the Rockies to scent…
A horse, a horse, my dumb king for a horse. My brand-new horse —the naysaying centrist—for state senate. The suede backseat of my thousand-horsepower hearse for a spare 10,000 hours to practice basic survival, the fine art of making a slow exit look painless. My last supper for an everlasting grain of salt…
After John Donne You. Gone now—to a better place, you would say, not on the earth. You are on my screen. A photo Paul took in the doctor’s office, an hour before you passed, which I received in the security line. Writing now, in the air. Do not photograph…
Translated by Andrej Pleterski If I were to write she stood there, in a fast-food restaurant, ordering soft ice cream, with the nearby park in cherry blossoms, if I were to write her pink was more distinct, everywhere: the socks, the cape, the lips, the eyelids, an adorned tree with a lively past, if…
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