Poetry

every day someone finds what they needin someone else                                   you tear into a bodyand come out with a fistful of the exactfeathers you were looking for wonderingwhy anyone would want to swallowso many perfect feathers                                                  everyonelooks uglier naked or at leastI do my pillar of fuzz my damplettuce               I hoarded an entire decadeof bliss of brilliant dime-sized rapturesand…

Pull hair from your head:                                                  He loves me.Pull nails from your fingers, from your feet,                              like pulling teeth.Pull teeth.                                   He always could                                                                      make you scream. Your navel, neck:                              once whiskey-licked, now                                                                                                    ghost-towned.Cast them off.                                   He loves me not.Drag your legs around & beg:                                                  Remember me. But this dissembling                                                                                     is your own                                                                                                                        invention.                                                  You always wanted to be character:                                   orphan girl, femme fatale. Heroine, riding bare                                                                                     back & white-hatted. Re-                              member…

I am afraid & so I run. If I wave a white flag, he’ll kill me,If I fight, I’ll die,I run Falling inside every stride.Where is the hero? WhereIs my swift horse? Achilles is a tiger, a tank, a raging fire,Every fear I ever hadIn one. I run. The gods help, especially ApolloGod of poetry…

Sometime late late last night, after polishing offTwo bottles of Millésime 2004 to mark our 25 wedding anniversaryAnd consequently finding ourselves dazed in bedFace to face eyelids drooping with both reading lamps blazing,Almost but not quite unconscious yet,I wanted to exclaim as I once didSomething seriously corny, like You are my queen! or at leastFlatteringly…

Four a.m., nothing moving, no hurry,dawn still has time to be choosyselecting its pinks. But now a breezebrushes across me—the way my skinis cooled off by the evaporationof sweat, this artistry, this systemsombers me: when I am blown fromthe body of life will it be refreshed?I dread the color of the answer Yes.

We know that somewhere far north of herethe two rivers Ba and Ab converge to formthis greater stream that sustains us, unitingthe lifeblood length of our lands: and we believethat the Ba’s source is heaven, the Ab’s hell. Daily expeditions embark upcountry to findthat fork, to learn where the merge first occurs.Too far: none of…

There are too many characters in this book I’m reading.I can’t keep track of them all.How can I care who marries who, or what they wear?Nevertheless, each time one vanishes, I feel a sharp, bright grief,knowing they will not reappear. This is how a boat drifts out to sea from shore.It gets distracted and detached,…

I see your clothes laid out on a bed:an elegant dress like a soft skinwaiting for you to enter itand go to a funeral. Even from here I can seethe fabric is soft, good quality.If you’ve left your dress on the bed your bodymust be close by… A larva enters a cocoon, emerges— Black butterfly,…

Blood on the Moon —James Ellroy I thought the demolition derby orsoap box derby or a roller derby, anyway,was where I would accompany my friend Pilar. I thought we’d be out the doorwhen I mentioned “derby”, but not on this day.She just wanted to spend the hours at home; join the anti-social corps,maybe some quality…