Poetry

  • Baggage

    It surprises me that immigrants brought rootstock of roses in their luggage. Scots roses, spinosissima, Eglanteria, the briar rose that spread out into New England: bits of thorny fragrance that smelled like home. Mostly they were at least as tough as the people who carted them here. I can understand seeds of grain, of vegetables,…

  • In White

    a white-trunked white- limbed white-leafed tree white petals sepals white stamens pistils bees inside a white woman pure white body skin hair white eyes white lips nipples blood white grass for the white stones of this white dream

  • Ode to Silence

    Glory to the half rest, to the breath between         the third and fourth beats,               the dwindling arrow of the decrescendo, to the sunrise over Malibu, and its sleeping starlets,        the empty horizon,               the city’s great thought…

  • That Night, I

    carried a baby heart in my pocket neat pink packet that kept beating a quiet music or calling machine with no reception except in my hand that reached from time to time in my pocket and cradled that only connection to what might have been or was it to what might be

  • Hitting and Getting Hit

    They could say what they liked, imitate the way I stuttered the morning Pledge, mashed the alphabet, ask how many chickens 1 plus 3 made, why my brain sat in a corner, in a class of one, refused to read or write, was nailed to my tongue, just as long as they understood that some…

  • Blackbird

    There are thirteen ways to look at a blackbird, but my backyard is not a blackbird,        and I am not Wallace Stevens, but I make do with an air conditioning unit and the remnants of an entertainment center,        the cherry wood stain fading into sod. I look down at this plot of land like I…

  • Diamond Haiku

    Major or minor, says Baseball Diamond Sutra, what does it matter? The boys of summer know that nirvana is just one inning away. Deep in the outfield, a glove reaches toward sky— fireflies blink on. Over the bleachers, a blank scoreboard announces no wins, no losses.