Poetry

My old boyfriend’s fortune cookie read, Your love life is of interest only to yourself. Not news to me. A famous writer once showed me the fortune in his wallet— You must curb your lust for revenge— slapped over his dead mother’s face. After finishing our Chinese meal at that god-forsaken mall, eight of us…

Through the skein of years, I had nothing to fear from this place. How final and brief it would be to disappear from this place. The tangle of driftwood and Coke cans and kelp in the sand made me think of the muddle that drove us (my dear) from this place. An orchard, a vineyard,…

That dog never barked, not a whimper, so it was heaven living next door to Pickwick and his mistress, Elzbieta, the Polish novelist on Brattle Street, my first apartment, my first year out of grad school. Elzbieta escaped the Warsaw ghetto, then worked for the Resistance during the war. What had I accomplished at 24?…

Pain    cloisters            itself deep   in the body like     a ladybug         nestling into a   pinecone. She finds       a pinecone split               in two, its spine         revealed. It is as if she has discovered     her own         corpse. What force could split a pinecone     down the center? Improbable    bolt of lightning, bright finger   of pleasure? Perhaps it has lain there for years The ashes      have drifted She is lost      in the pine forest         of…

On the park bench You turn the page of a travelogue— Henry James is eating the last of a puffy croissant Near the border of Italy and France. A crumb has attached Itself to his beard—oh, the faux pas Of greeting Madame du Coudray, With his top hat coming off, His bow like a bending…

for Kay Ryan We sharpen our lapidary eyes toward flaws, and see the easy cz disguise, the phrase too pleased to please. We loupe the soldering for telltale fracturing. We will not be fooled. But let us withdraw the ball-peen hammer from its velvet swaddling, let us address the listing prong, the innocuous ding: we…

They were in love. This is not a fairytale. She did not offer him a curl as a keepsake.                          Even then she knew, she had nothing worth keeping. They partook of each other           It was not communion.           It was not an offering to the gods. Like starving children, they feasted again and again on nothing….

The party girl was down, The pink chowder of puke Splashed in front, Dizziness like a carnival ride, All because of the slushy drinks Slurped on one of those docked boats On the Thames. Been there, Done that, I thought. I stepped Over her, just a lassie In jeans, her golden hair Lifting slightly, And…

You are alone and walking down to Ryan’s house and staring hard at bags of rubbish thrown from cars on the old Dungannon road. Overnight a revival tent has moored in the field as a rule reserved for Fossett’s Circus, or the cars of spectators for the Cookstown 100, who picnic on the verge and…