Poetry

as the voice inside the telephonemade crying soundsor allergy sounds. It was that time of year—             the particle count highand already a shortageof rental cars and we were all desperateto vacate the premiseswhile you had already done so.                          Standing between the voiceand my selfat the center of ourweather     hovering acrossthe outlandish girthof America and twenty years…

If description is a living thing, dark cherry hair and glass eyes, tilted away—I want to say something that will look at me. If to memorize is to adore and cannot afford distraction or a socket neck that rotates the head  away,  if  death  is  turning  away, with long  brown  human  hair,  revolving  like  a globe,  from …

in terms ofdesign onebox is coloredorange the one you wantedalways is andsits in the bathroomof anyone’shouse causethat’s whatshe wantsit’s choosingthat wakes thingsup I wondered howlong allthat I needed and encounteredherewould come like a wavenot the shakebut the aftereffectsand this boxdid saythere was a wayto see thisthinga-loneJuly calledit calculuswhat iscomes in boxeswhat is notcomes in wavesthe…

Everything recedes With such grand effort. A morsel On the winter palace floor. In the trees Up ahead, a light goes out, asleep In her summer arms. Hate is born As a monument to our inattention and the blind Greed of disbelief. Even the heroin addict has more Conviction, morbidly patient with his addiction. Work,…

It is so and so and not the dusty worldwho drops. It is their mother and not the dusty worldwho drops them. Why I imagine her so oftenempty-handed as houseboats’ distant lightsrise and fall on the far ripples—I do not know. I know that darkness.Have stood on that bridgein the space between the streetlightsdizzy with…

but don’t read this poem whose title implies I think you’re old but youare at least older than me time passing makes everyone old unlessdeath and I don’t want that which is not to say I’m terrified but don’tnot read this poem because you’ve died! I’d rather insult you what Imean is—oh look! I think…

1. A cage can be a body: heart in the nightquieted slightly; mind, a stopped top.Clock spring set. Hand in motion.The fact of the hollowed nothing head. How did we come to this? Inch by inch.I was born, borrowed from the beast;I was now property in a countrywhere chain reigns—the empire city of I. 2….

Now and then, you heard the copters Flying in search of inmates who’d escaped. Mostly, though, it was quiet. At night, outside, The cats would fight and fuck and knock shit down, The couple next door would simmer in heat Or bitterness. Sometimes you saw them, In the window-glass, appearing Like quarter-moons through mist. There…

I’m only a human. Always is only in meas long as I last. What do I want? Don’t ask. We forget who we are. Conformists all alonelooking for a fake mirror and finding itin some poker nobody sitting across the aisle. To be like some other and feel that.While I am walking aroundon the only…