Poetry

  • Quiet Life

    I spent the last year avoiding peoplewho announce the forms they write in.My life calmed. Became less try-hard. Son, I want that for you—A careful economyof sound decisions

  • Silence

    Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. Silence….

  • Correspondences

    Translated by Carolyn Forché This is the sign for “human”and this is the sign for “god.”This is the thought that life actuallylies outside the one who lives it—yes,that life would continue even if we did notdo so, as if it werea large tenement where some movein and others move out. I’m walkingthrough the rooms on…

  • Alba

    Translated by Carolyn Forché The curtain moved gently,dawn spilled milk over the city.I never saw you again like that.

  • The School of Knowledge

    On the second day, light; on the third, water,then the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, etcetera,until you come to the lesson-centered dayyou see the Milky Way as the downy drink of morning. You’re ever aware of the sharedterror of the shy kids souring the airin the classroom. The globe spins dailyas you climb out of your…

  • The Poem

    For Christian You know it hadn’t a drop to do with loveexcept that if I showed you howsalt boiled on each winding stairback into that Baudelaireancellar eaved in velvet,your ear might love mine more for it. Surely I’d gone partly madbut can it have been madness if it yieldeda sound like a fruit spasming its…

  • Offering

    From Look at This Blue Your palms know where to go.                                                  What they imagine leads you.Everything we muster moves us along, like water mirroring itself remembers                                                  where to flow, how to go there.In the dream you follow, in the dream we fly over all of this direness     float. We move like porpoises, undulate in air,…

  • Mule

    Growing up in the South is like kicking a mule          to feel eternity in your bones.                    Or kicking a scarecrow, and calling it a mule.Or running your fingers over the rusted,          abandoned blade from a tractor                    in its eternal rest, and calling that a mule. You’ll call anything a mule. Lace doilies          on the dining room table, the white-suited mayor                    leaning…