Poetry

Say no now and you will get off easy. Maybe. The firebrand in your heart is only a rental, Just a spent ember with nothing left to do Than plead guilty, not no contest. Now go, Go to your room and gawk, or else text-message Yourself, write runes, or if the rhinencephalon In your boiling…

If I get religious for a minute, it will be to keep terms with the bewildered caul of being thirteen, surrounded by the dead. What used to peek through the roof, never so much stroking string things and eating afterlife biscuits, as making sound like a wonky piano dragging its broken leg in an interminable…

after Issa I think it’s enough just to sit and meditate, heedless of the needs of others close to us and of their perpetual demands that seem to sap the strength from us. My doorway and the morning dew are all I need to make my day, and that is where I’ll plan to be….

The sky was low. His head was a vase of sorrows he wanted to fill with blossoms. He stepped into the House of Wigs. The saleslady said, “Try this one on. It’s called the Mind of Fire. It turns ashes into flame. Prometheus was wearing it, they say, when he was punished by the Gods…

And shall we describe the beautiful bike? It was a beautiful color the beautiful bike. What ever happened to the beautiful bike? The beautiful bike rode off into the beautiful sunset. Not by itself, surely. Who was pedaling the beautiful bike? You, you were the one pedaling the beautiful bike last seen disappearing into the…

A basket in the shape of a sunflower— still hanging on your bedroom wall. You made it in school. You loved it so much you wouldn’t stop making it. Or couldn’t stop. We don’t agree, on what you said. But I was your favorite. I thought, What kind of boy makes such a basket? Professional…

Some say the Army                                             and some the Marines and some say the Air Force is the greatest sight sweeping over this crippled earth but I say love                       for example                                                        a wedding the bride’s face hidden as though no longer hers to share                                  and the sound of wailing            oh, Anaktoria                                             what have they done the soldiers…

and I answer by driving around, which seems to me the most American of activities, up there with waving the incendiary dandelion of sparklers or eating potato salad with green specks of relish, the German kind, salad of immigrants, of all the strange pickled bits we carry over from other places, like we did on…

a father has lost his son. He circles shoe racks, lingerie, dressing rooms, calling out “Marco!…Marco!…” We all want to help, but it’s just too much: Oh, the tragedy of naming then losing a son named Marco— born to love and to wander, whole head submerged in the starched cup of an outsized Playtex bra,…