Poetry

When the sun broke up the thunderheads, and dissonance was consigned to its proper place, the world was at once foreign and known to me, that was shame leaving the body. I had lived my life from small relief to small relief, like a boy pulling a thorn from his foot. Wet and glistening, twisting…

for my mother, Veronica Cazier (1955-1991) The undertaker gripped my hand. I said I wanted Dairy Queen. I touched her cheek because I needed proof—and after, Dairy Queen. It’s what I asked for every day: to go to Dairy Queen. Worse than dead, she wasn’t quite herself. I pictured Dairy Queen. I’d finished second grade…

Sometimes, after snow, you find yourself in a field of laughing gulls shaken and spat in a mass kill and your boots are the only noise. It’s like a bad joke I cannot resist telling. Enough. Hunger is plenty. Everything is dangerous. New moon, the red fox is out walking. Extinction is nothing to the…

As for the fly I chased around the bathroom with a towel that night,         swatting, slapping, thrashing, pounding, kicking with one foot the toothbrush cup onto its side, dislodging the         tea curtain with a misplaced elbow, unable for all my efforts to terminate his gallant loops and arabesques,         his beeline dives and fighter-pilot vectorings, his…

I’m a cipher. Before that, I was a loose cannon. Before that, I was a zealot. I preached on the street corners. I accosted strangers in subways to tell them I had good news for them. Before that, I worked on the assembly line in a fireworks factory. I stuck fuses in firecrackers and poured…

That story I told you about suffering Was a lie. I never wandered into The woods with a pack of matches. Truth is I was born there, and there I ran the weather. Deer left Apples in my hand, so I didn’t think To cook the deer. The secret of my Life was my life,…

at your marker (they call it a marker) a footstone hipper than headstones           earlier mapquest led to metro north           google to the most reliable cab service in peekskill I bring wheat      tall dry half-live stalks           bought the day before           (new york has everything)           no one questions the harvest shooting from…

I’m only leaving you for a handful of days, but it feels as though I’ll be gone forever— the way the door closes behind me with such solidity, the way my suitcase carries everything I’d need for an eternity of traveling light. I’ve left my hotel number on your desk, instructions about the dog and…