Book I Of a first disobedience, and the fruit Of that tree, whose mortal taste brought death Into the world, and all our woe. Sing Muse, How heaven and earth rose out of chaos; Aid my adventurous song that intends To soar while it pursues things attempted In prose and rhyme. Instruct me from…
All night, the wildfires burn in Paradise. You’ve been in Texas for a week comforting your mother. Ashes swarm our porchlight in a warm wind. How long will you be gone? I ask. You say that you’re not sure: It’s hard. Her new apartment’s strewn with boxes— and she won’t…
Look, netted in shadows of dying elms, we study our sandwiches like manuals, unscrew thermos warheads, doze, hat brims down, while one cups a joint as if it were a hatchling, offering the cinder, its smoke a rope flung to where I toil astride this trough of what I never want to set,…
And yet, off alone, we were happy with what stayed the same, and we stood there in the space between world and plaything, upon a spot which, from the beginning had been established for pure event. —Rainer Maria Rilke, from “The Fourth Elegy” Translated by Edward Snow Beneath the highway, the stream was…
Lake-deep black of night and no song we sing will do. After pillow forts, Minotaur lullabies, glow-in-the-dark starfighters, shadow animals’ chomp and gallop, wing- flap and pearl—between flood tide and lightning bloom, our son keeps awake and smiles, rhymes storm with remember, bird with brother with Earth. I kiss the rise…
Because Ariel speaks of a king’s son, his boats aflame, crying Hell is empty, and all the devils are here, I ask my son to tell me about love. He chalks crowns and rockets across newsprint, draws wolves, rain clouds, an owlet, says You love me—and my mama. I love triceratops. We try these…
Mama called me one thing, named me another. Gave me a mouth on my stomach and fed me. Tied my ankles. Lit a fire round me and called it purification. Placed her own veil over my head. Kissed my belly mouth. Said it was good. It was hard to eat and speak. I didn’t want…
I am sometimes in pain and occasionally sit to write my name in dark inks and the brush goes wobbly, as if excited into shapes without me. The crop fields of someone’s childhood still bother the edges of my vision, tawny gridded country, low born, wind gripping the assembled heads of wheat, bristling. One job…
The opening to another country was always inside my father’s mind, in many forms, in dreams: green swords swirling in a winter mist, colorful moths, sometimes a molar falling out, porcelain clattering onto the table like a single rung chime. When I come into the house, I am held by him, become a…
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