Poetry

  • Restaurant

    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…

  • Poem About a Still Life

    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…

  • The Centaur of Volos

    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…

  • August on the Coast

    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…

  • My Ship Has Sails

    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…

  • Laundry Day

    All one needs to belong to the company Of the truly grateful is to feel grateful, Just as I felt when, retrieving a sock This afternoon from behind the dryer, I found the book you lent me Four years ago, two years before your heirs Sold off your library. Did you ever wonder What had…

  • The Blower of Leaves

    Today I bow to the power of negative space,the beauty of what’s missing—the hard work of yard work made harder without you,while the stiff kiss of acorns puckers the ground. I am a fool. Even as the red impatiens wither and brown,they are still lovely. I feed the gaping mouths of lawn bags with their…

  • Loitering

    “No Loitering” reads the sign by the school.But what about a school that offers coursesIn loitering as an art, each class designedTo break another link in the argumentThat we ought to be somewhere else by nightfall,Ought to start now if we’re to arrive on timeFor the meeting of those in need of a truthWe’ve distilled…