Salisbury, solitary, sings as if Isaiah in her—All Along the Watchtower edge and ridge of plain they ride for Warminster. Anger, broken in her, iron age, stone age, bone and barrow, is as if herFather yet not father photographed before the warUnfathomed by her— Anger of another relatively new to her beside her nowLike coulter—plough-hard,…
I want no more to do with what is understandable. There there. Only the lilliburlero of bird because it is songful. The lark ascending the air. Vaughan Williams’ Surrey local choir of ladies sorrowful between the wars. Only the dot and carry one of Clare who gave himself moon and stars to Northampton County Asylum…
Small mysteries. Leave unidentified that picture hidden in the dresser drawer and everyone in it, any reason for it, and who and where and why and when you were. Leave coins in babies’ shoes. Leave words on scraps of paper tucked inside coffee table books: galoshes, periwinkle, ménage a trois, calligraphy—maybe terrified. For the most…
A black man and a white man like two philosophical mates are engaged in a debate. What has only one syllable, and no eye, ear, or tongue, yet is God’s class-act creation? Night, says the black man. It has to be night that inspires rest and mystery. Day, says the white man. It has to…
from Chains From dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn, I, slaveto Sir John Hawkins, bound, emblackened crestupon his coat of arms of lion and wave,salute him, founder of the Chatham Chestthat succors seamen maimed in the Armada;salute him true in Spanish, French, Italian;salute him, most courageous founding fatherof Chatham Dockyard and the “race built…
“If you sold this place,” says my neighbor, “you could buy a little flat.” A little flat! One with no room for half my books, no stairs to keep my knees in flexible order, one in which on no morning would my eyes open to next door’s silver birch, self-sown in the days of Marjorie…
I think myself thin untila scale calls me to honesty,its numbers the mind of God,unrelenting, and I questiona machine that can drive usto uncertainty, to suicide,or into the edges of murder,thinking we are more or lessnot there or here. One dayI walked down a street feelingmyself there, feeling as thickor thin as I wanted to…
Under her tongue, there was a story.In her mouth, nails. Frances hammered license platesto the back wall of her garage. There hang the years that sunk like a foot in loose soil.That rusted like a hinge. Whose hand or what machineetched the numbers that cruised along in the exhaust of a town that no longer…
She taught the girl how to roll dough thin, but Frances didn’t teach me. I was too wild to crimp a crust. Once, in a fit, I took off my shoe, raised it above my head, but never meant to throw it. A stranger at the post office recognized someone’s face in my face, noted…
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