Poetry

a tangle of wings and abdomens slappingthe windowpane. My first instinct was to annihilate them. My next instinctto pamper them, to lay out a buffet of egg-enticing garbage, the shriveledstrawberries languishing in the fridge put to use at last. I wanted to learnto regard the divine not with ambivalence, but the insouciance of my dog’sgroggy…

“How much are you willing to sacrifice?”the spandex-suited antagonist asksin the movie I have decided to rentalmost without thought, it being Friday, late,my wife’s body sprawled impressivelyacross the couch so that I decide, finally,to sit slouched on the floor beneathmy pile of blankets, but now, in the dark,my nose close to the screen, the villainspeaking…

Near Chinatown, at the intersection waiting for the light, an older Chinese woman blurts out, “Nice dress. 4 or 6?” “Oh, I used to be a 6,” she says when I confirm her guess, “now I’m an 8 or 10.” Chagrin lingers in the air, and I want so badly a rescue from the body,…

Windswept moors and dirty villages, returning home to a place no longer home, love triangles—when my own triangle began. How could this happen, I wondered. I’d been so devout and chaste, like a Hardy character—at the beginning. Eustacia Vye and Clym Yeobright felt even more real to me with my newfound experience, how you can…

Like Paul in the Bible you said. No morethe Chad we knew. Can’t call it a surprise.You never stuck with anything for long. LittleLeague teams or foster homes where others quicklyfilled your place. It’s only fitting for “Paul” to havea new wife, kids. School district free from skidmarks you left from a burnout in front of…

We’re standing atop the hill watching streaks of sunsetfade over dimming buildings, you hold my waist frombehind as I make eye contact with a dark blue raven ina tree just beyond the precipice. Farther than the treeyou made me kneel behind as the wind lapped at mybare arms and the mosquitos came closer for the…

We stand hushed on the patio. Stars fall—brightash—between branches of the large mesquiteleaning over us as the scientist—our unexpectedguest—holds high the recording of elf owlshooting he’d magically found in his car. They’rein the saguaro, he whispers. They’ll answer. Andsilent we listen. Waiting for one then anotherowl to sound, we hear a motorcycle, then acar revving…

for Yannis Ritsos for years in exile on an island, wrote with no other witnessthan sea wind and the ranked blue waves,wrote on scraps of paper skinned from cigaretteshiding the rolled-up poems in his trouser cuffs,permitting guards to believe that his penwas for stones, for finding faces in the stonesand drawing them out, feature by…

Some days each grain of her dragsthrough unsafe air. I wrap her in stardustscarves that float around the anchors of her heavy arms, those limbs anchoringher, and me, to all the words we women dragbehind us, the ones we wish we could dust off: fat, bitch, she wishes. I reach for the starof her body, so…