Poetry

surprise: “Hear that off-key trill? Be still, my heart,”she whispers just before she belts out heraria and it’s like God is right therebefore her in the vision of her sweetheartrising from the grave. At the premiere, her partwas played by soprano Malvina Schnorrvon Carolsfeld; Tristan, by Ludwig Schnorrvon Carolsfeld, who would soon departfrom this world…

Let’s start at the very beginning.A very good place to start. Nothing but a hum. That’s howit goes. Expecting a thought, getting an ellipsis. In the morningmy son thrills at flipping the light on, then off, then on, then off again.Shrieks of joy, then on to the next adventure. Jump-starterof sparks. Where is the light?…

Behind the saints & other tchotchkes, behind the urnstill waiting to receive me— I’ve slipped the summer I scoured Europewith my Death. When I was Death’s best mount, the maremade biddable. Soft-mouthed. Eager to be ridden. In widow’s crepe, how ferociously I courted him,how gladly I amused himin a gown too girlish, the old scums…

When sadness settlesin, more intractable than usual—when it takes more pains to make itselfknown— I tell my sisters not to worry.I will garden the sadness away. I decideon a raised bed, staining the cedar planksI stack into walls that form a newlack. I order loam and compostthe man with the pickup calls gorgeous. Do we…

Long before Francis,St. Isaac of Syria welcomed creaturesgreat and small. My kind of saint,he said that Hell might not last—Godcould end it. What if Isaachad stepped in, held his hand upto my father, said No! Stop! Would Istill be this tree split by lightning,sending out shoots of greenagainst all odds?

When I think of perennials, I do not think of you. I do not thinkhoneybees hovering over petals, nor the sex organs of galaxiesof apologies. I think of your mother, rough as an oak’s charmeyes dark & lacquered, two seeds of a riot. She’s not a cronebut she crops weeds, threads her fingers through goldenrod.She…

I leave the midnight to find your beginningby way of a village weathering into ruin,by means of men coerced into combat by way of an empire shepherding the workof death. I am here in California and you arethere in the Annamites. I seek you by way of retreat, refugees fleeing a line of fireby way…

October’s late vermilion, or the sound a cast stone makes in still water,a starkness to mark the loamy edge of becoming—wants a flashof white flank and mane recedingbehind the glimmering scrim, shadows moving in—a chill wind spinningin the creaking treesgathering themselves close—needs a stream, a shoot, a faraway spring, muskof dead and dying leaves—foxfire, brackish…

—Bullwinkle When you dieyou cannot know you’re dead    and no onetries to tell you either. A small treeof memories rustles in your head, whilea Motown song just wheezes. The last thing you rememberis a doctor shrugging off the cure. You feel for the light switchbut only find that token doorless door. The quiet grows like…