Poetry

In the same week that John F. Kennedy, Jr., with wife Caroline and her sister Lauren, crashed his private plane into the sea, a Kentuckian who worked for Tyson Foods— which gave big money to President Bill Clinton, who led the mourning for JFK, Jr.—fell into, not a vat, vat sounds undignified, like in that…

Here I am, confronting this bowl kept under guard and pressurized glass in the archway of the St. Louis Art Museum, and somehow it feels good to note that it’s not all that impressive. Clean, sure, and smooth, but plain. Like this was just the demonstration piece by the teacher of a pottery class who…

I don’t believe in ghosts though I’ve seen milk-steam wandering a darkened room. I don’t believe a big mind regards all sparrows though I admire the faithful, how crossing a street or a continent of trouble they seem confident and frank as stars. Cranky and cratered, I maneuver like a moon of bright remarks. In…

I hear a generator buzz, I taste those days, citronella swirled with cardboard meals and ice unlimited, and the welcome thrill of Katrina’s king cake dolls, half-ounce bottles of Tabasco packed with MREs marked “Chicken Fajitas.” People thought our food was special made, a little heat singing to the tongue of home, but I knew…

We’ll never know for sure now, you in your garage with the motor on and the tailpipe clogged and the door closed, three days before the trial. Your wife found you after she found the note, and this morning the numinous beauty of low fog in our field has taken on a strange gloom, a…

You’ve got to have a little faith in people, the girl says, blinking tears. She’s seventeen, the wise, shy center of a film where couple after couple split, East Side lovers blown round an unending storm, while past them whirl parks, cafés, planetariums. The screen (she’s sobbing) swears by Woody Allen’s smile like lead anchoring…

(Tyrannus tyrannus) That bird towering: late summer garden: who senses the burring wings deep inside roses and like the angel before all nectar’s sipped before gold scatters in bright air descends from its high height to lift away the bee… not a honey eater: though looking so: bee after bee disappearing into incandescence:: Only the…

For Dewey Huston Tell me again about the butterflies, old friend of my father, bringer of tales, the gully, mossy rocks of the streambed, a cool breeze off the glacier high above, and suddenly butterflies everywhere as if the air you breathed were blossoming. I’ve seen so many things, you said. I wish I could…

As they loaded the dead onto the gurneys to wheel them from the university halls, who could have predicted the startled chirping in those pockets, the invisible bells and tiny metal music of the phones, in each the cheer of a voiceless song. Pop mostly, Timberlake, Shakira, tunes never more various now, more young, shibboleths…