Poetry

I divide my time between the NewYork in my mind and a cow-sprouted field, divide my rightear from my left, though the leftreceives god-like frequencies onlymy poodle can hear. I divide myliver from my brain when I swillwine and smoke. Divide my sunnydisposition from the sun it neverowned. Divide my body frommy bed, home from…

There was a poisoning.Perhaps from the reincarnation ages ago where your hands curled and stitchedthe fake flower bouquets of 1860, dusted them with Scheele’s green,the arsenic powder breathed into your child lungs. Or maybe before that,like Napoleon, copper sulfate from a papered bedroom settled like a secretinto your waistcoat and gloves. Centuries have passed since…

There was no will. Only footwork. In sunless hospital roomsI played card games with men twice my age. Say it wasn’tabout falling but the gated terrain’s arrival after the jump,then I landed not in heaven but in Redding where I tradedmy blue jeans & black boots for a dotted white gown. Here,the men & I…

Maybe it means somethingwhen Jeremiah of the Shopping Cartrolls his chariot across this monster parking lotto ask about my soul again. Maybe I should climb aboard this time—we’ll break Wonder Bread,sip Mountain Dew,toss twelve-packs to the children. Maybe I’ll be a part of some miracle—feel for once,memory resisting her adjectives.Hear dreams changing their minds.Every wheel…

I part the wild horse’s mane      the arms rise and knees sinkand outside the window car hoods      line the DQ parking lotmy knees sink and elbowsbend as I’m told energy held inthe muscle is memory forming      but when I rise the nightdoes not alleviate the heat outside      the hotel where I did not expect      to be — not lost and…

I must have been sitting at the wrong table—the conversation was about chilblains,someone insisted only the British knowwhat they are—who among us had hadthem, those red eruptions of welts onhands and feet shivering in the damp cold?No one.(I wanted to change the subject so I didn’t saymy father had chilblains when he swamin our icy…

We waited around, for what I don’t know—the strange body becoming strangerthe more we stared?                                   After you starelong enough a cloud might take the shapeof a frog or an elephant lying down,or not look like anything but cloud. How much time had passed? After a while we put on our jackets and hats,then somebody dropped a deerskin…