Poetry

  • Roadside Memorial

    See how the white crosses rise                                                                  out of the ordinary, this stretch of freeway indifferent except it holds                                                                  the loss of someone loved. Bent in the ditch                                                                  empty of rain, the mourners are artists assembling silk flowers, pinwheels                                                                  turning in the sun, stuffed teddy bears, t-shirts,                                                                  handwritten letters, into public sculpture. Monuments of faith, of…

  • Every Time I Choose English

    I am your favorite sound.Say galangal and the tongueretreats. Say rhizome and the rootstalkshoots out new growth.We pull it from the ground,carry it gently: a hand. A harvestof red-veined petals we rubon our lips. Tonight, when my ear hungers,I will feed it song. The metallic talkof hummingbirds. The unfolding of a letter,a shovel hitting rock,…

  • The Shark

    is really three differentmechanized sharks plusfootage of one real shark filmed during a trip to Australiafor that specific purpose. The parts of JAWSthat frighten are the parts where you can’t see the shark. They’re scary becauseyou can’t see the shark. They had to work arounda malfunctioning mechanical shark, rewriting scenes so the shark’s presenceis suggested…

  • The Wolf

    We used to say field in English where we now say battle, where we still say battlefield. As in: many a bloody field was fought. As in: at night, I survey the adrenaline-addled field of my brain. As in: when I’m deprived of sleep for days, the air in the black room holds tiny points…

  • Wetlands

    So thick with sphagnum          a person more sure-footed than I amcan balance on its undulating surface,           even cross from side to side.Didder. British for how a floating bog          quivers when someone steps on the rotting leaves, reeds, and mosses          built up over time.What will I find in my mire           if not the leathery bodiesof dead kings and commoners?          Bent…

  • FAMILIARS

    AVAILABILITY A boy and a deer, a god-boy holding his window, his mirror. Daphne resting in the window and the curve of the boy’s back. The deer’s delicate legs and hooded Orca eyes. Daphne calling her father, she has no father, she has one of many common river gods for a father who does his impotent,…

  • The Longest Table

    Surprised by ageand then my father diesActually dies, actuallyChanges form & goes, physicallyInto a small rosewood boxImploded like a star, negativeOn a little table under an awningI have to trust is put into the earth

  • “I Seen It”

    You let that drop, and I know where you’re from.I know the verbal tic of my hometown—the one I ran so hard from with my kid,some books, and mended pocketsful of hope. I seen it shrug off cornfields like a coat,lie bare and cold and calloused with concrete.I seen it lose steel jobs, oil jobs,…

  • High Every Day

    I live in the basement of the lake.I live on the bottom of the moon.I pry her birch bark loose, grazefor centipedes that swim the heart-wood beneath. I burn the prisondown and climb the gate. Morningafternoon and night, I kiss my jaileron his thin white lips. I am two crowslaughing in a poison eucalyptus. I…