When I change lanes on I-70 North toward the St. Louis airport, my father points to my sideview mirrors and asks how I like them angled. He tells me he keeps his tilted to show only a trace of his car, a shadow, enough to see where it ends and the asphalt picks up.And while…
That’s how much time they give you to bribe the hall of records for the paperwork you bribe the foreman to sign, swearing you know nothing and owe nothing—no loans, no debtsbefore you bribe a woman to sell your pots and pans, plates, plants, rugs, and record player, so you can bribe a dentist and…
for TP The woman down the hall has a girlfriend. When they fell in love the sea was a finger. It pushed them both in the belly. It rubbed their lips. It ran itself up and down their thighs. Then they got married. The sea came to the wedding and ate the shrimp cocktail. Had…
Before she told me, she let mefinish my dinner. I can still seethe pinkish cream sauceblossoming on the china. I didn’t know yet if I could walkwhen I pushed myself back from the table.This is what gets me:I didn’t throw the stained dish against the wall.I slipped the plastic from my wallet.I signed my name.No…
A poem about “Still Life with Fruit,Wine, Glasses, and a Bowl of Cherries,” by Hendrik van Streek, can’t stay in the painting for longunless it takes a closer look at the blue bowl holding the cherriesand wonders, as the wall label wonders,whether that’s Chinese porcelainshipped to Europe by the Dutch East India Company,or tin-glazed earthenwarefired…
He takes the bones of a pony, a pot of Earl Grey tea, a paintbrush and what remains of the bodywhere his students learned, for years, to name the parts, saying ulna, radius, tibia, skull. Saying femur, sternum, pelvis, clavicle. Is this not how god made Eve and Adam, more or less? The one from clay, the other from a rib…
The child imitating a dragonflyzoomed into the dusty elmsand came back a child. The child mocking a fireflylit and went outuntil he was invisible. In honor of nightthe child closed his eyes. The child pretending to be a childburned to grow old, soon he weptin dry coughs. Always the wind like a comb in your…
I pick the lock of every knock in the nightor rasp of leaves until I hear his voice as it wasin life. Even when I want the past as charredas these pine logs gasping for air in the stove,heartwood turned to cinder no hand can makewhole again, I say grace for the cold scrapsmemory serves,…
Is poetry ruining my life, I wonder,upstairs in a house with more windows than wallswhere I am trying to write or read it.Downstairs “Lady in the Dark,” complete with dialogue,too loud, and the purr of my husband’s snore.I feel a fume coming on, kindlingfor an inferior rage that will not serve,but ruins.At dawn, before speech…
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