Poetry

I tie my hat—I crease my shawl (522)—Emily Dickinson is carried crown first through light that hums.Her country is built of two rooms: need and desire.Birds rarely come near. She cannot seeher shoes or the tops of buildings or the moon.She wonders if she is kind. She is as quietas a student in the back…

Here you will feel no ecstasy, no brightimperative to weep, or to give thanks,or to endure. Instead, we offer solacein what’s gaudy, saccharine, timid, tame:in trees rigidly perfect, Christs with too-whiteteeth, a sunset blushing at its own excess.The portraits here preserve the blind precisionof the novice, those who kept on polishinglong after likeness came, whose…

You have to feel your feelings Right now I feel amused, uncomfortable, tolerant,with a twist in my heart, as if I’m applyingfor a visa to the country of unhappiness and sorrowwhich gets mixed reviews on Trip Advisor.In this waiting room, we are all seedy & hopelessand the elephant gray plastic chairs are lined up like…

The Milky Way’s glinting ribbon helps the dung beetleroll his good ball of shit back to the ones he loves.But blind him to the sky with as little as a hat,and he will swerve like a drunk who, if he makes it home alive, might find the family, soured with waiting,gone. Drawers cleared, beds cold,…

I miss the charcoal drawing of gallium that hung in my chemistry class. How the metal whose melting point is below human body temperature was misspelled galium, how the hand cupping the silver goop stopped at the wrist. I don’t think it was meant to disturb, to invoke a caught thief. I don’t think the charcoal spreading…

Here’s where I leave you. A dream, a quiver. A ficklebit of light after the rain. Squint: I can’t really remembernow where I was going. We lick the haze, open ourlips, find again pleasure in what we nibble aimlessly. Seconds become minutes always, but sometimeshours forget the days. There are two threads: The onewe follow…

An Elvis impersonatorcurling his lipas he limbers up for “Return to Sender,”a wave may develop that slight curling of the liptill it becomes a sneer.Not that a wave may more than slightly develop.The character of Snare becomes a sneerno less than Master Fang,the character of Snarebeing in a funk no less than his buddy, Master…

When I gave up praying,an $800 windfall arrived in the mailand no longer did I brew my tearsinto a bitter tea that paid the bills. Though it turned out to be surplus in theescrow account, once I’d have chalked it upto God—that unexpected checka biscuit for the trick I’d been taught. But what, if not…

The whale was real.                                        So was the beach, carsick                                        & damp in the armpits as I was.Father’s shaggy hunk                                        of leg against my young flank.The crowd on the shoulder                                        of the road watching the crowd                                        smoke around the whaleI mistook for a stranded barrel.                                        Did it outswell the ocean                                        with breathing, was it yearling                                        white, bruised like light                                        entering a dark room, in its…