Poetry

  • Sappho 16

    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…

  • At Kohl’s Department Store

    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,…

  • Energy Policy

    This practical kid, born Capricorn, actuary of the stars, he’s planning my death, sure of the thermodynamic heaven he’s invented. Because energy must go somewhere in this system, in his I’ll be repurposed as a tree. And this comforts me, as no discount coupons for paradise ever could. Finally fitting, I’ll meet my zero as…

  • Aurora Perpetua

    O tulip, tulip, you bloom all day and later sway a deep-waisted limbo above the dinner table, waiting for a coin to drop into your well, for the stars to pin your stem to their lapel. Soon, on ocean winds, dawn cries its devotion, our world entranced once more into being. Let go your sumptuous…

  • To One Waiting to Be Born

    1. Know your origin: you are a token of the afterwards of love. What flinches in the ribbon of your utterly new blood is nothing but the echo of a bed post— pulse.            You have grown up. From filament within your mother’s bulb, you have evolved into a chandelier of bones, weightlessly orbiting your portion…

  • Ghost Lessons

    All winter the ghosts were waiting for a new high-school teacher who refused to appear, and so you were roped in. February had the year on pause, the days like holes that tripped you over and over in the frozen yard. You had no knowledge of history or chemistry yet were expected to teach the…

  • The Invisible Book

    Sometimes when I’m reading, I’m distracted by the invisible book underneath the book I’m actually reading and the problem is this: it’s better. It’s like the superball under the couch that your fingertips barely brush: the slightest contact and it’s gone, gliding easily away, because its form is nearly perfect, there, a sphere in the…

  • Black Bear

    Reminds me of early winter—field dressed, dangling from a porch girder like an upside-down garland of roses, no longer animal or drifting hole in a snow-blazed moor. How is it the body knows it deserves the ground before the clouds? The noose almost giving in? Suddenly thawed, dropped in its own shadow, held: un-mothered, sucked…