Poetry

  • Elegy for the Road

    Translated from the Spanish by Jesse Lee Kercheval       I ask where the things go that did not arrive at their destination. Themajority of things. The largest inventory in the world. Where are theygoing to end up, the things that do not end up anywhere. Those thatfail, those that have no remedy. I ask where do…

  • Blame Game

    Pin the ozone layer on me: I drove my Hummer into the skywhen I gunned through a red light.I hit outer space; I clearly went too far. It’s hard to tweeze apart a holefrom the everyday emptiness of air. Hard to touch upon a hole & not sailright through. One day or another every iceberg…

  • Please and Thank You

    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 doThan plead guilty, not no contest. Now go,Go to your room and gawk, or else text-messageYourself, write runes, or if the rhinencephalonIn your boiling brain dictates, write filth,Stinky warm-ups for…

  • Bare Trees

    They are big fans of horror film.In the fading light of a November afternoon,The gray surface of a pondLooks like a movie screen to them. The moving branches reflected in itAre like the fingers of the blindGroping to touch the face of someoneWho’s been calling out to them In the voice of geese flying overhead,The…

  • Writing

    There are feelings I would rather not have,so I avoid certain types of texts and images—particularly pornography. Sometimes I think this makes mea better person, but, in actuality, it also makes me a coward.Am I so afraid I’ll enjoy some ridiculously sexist fantasy?I’m not sure what I’d do with the uglinessI’d find inside me. Don’t…

  • The Interment

    The graveside prayers and eulogies over,A stray dog came to bark at us among the headstonesAs we trooped back over a hill watchingThe wind lift the widow’s skirt higher and higher,While the undertaker ran after us,Waving an umbrella someone had left behind. We couldn’t help but think of our friendLying red-faced in his pricey new…

  • What Is Left Here

    Out in the open, there is a cowshed.There are the expected gaps and hornets. Here lives our story, where we used to meet—You smelled like hay, were always listening to some other sound, the buzzing of your ownideas chasing us down. You began building a staircase out of thorny branches, then a vest out of…