well—i suppose we could spend more time pretendingi bought a new suit for carnegie hall—bought a new suitfor the occasion, bought a new suit with dues from parisyes it’s true, he pays a price for an america which stillleaves a balance. well—i have a future held in the lungsof this great thundering silence. this sleeping…
We were downing cheap red wine at a barcalled Library Books free for the takingThe carafe like a blood-filled IV bagI opened a book on palmistry LifelinesWhen my words began to slur you took me to Mickie-Dee’s A ghoul was thereand the grim reaper Masks on every tableI saw bones in the…
It is not my birthday but todayI walk by the cold shrubsof my town’s finest lanepopping birthday cake jelly beansinto my mouth one by one.How spectacular, the waywe’ve reduced an eventinto a little waxen egg!It is speckled like a robin’s egg;pink, blue, yellow, orange.It even has the tasteof the bend where the caketurned crusty caramel…
Translated from the Spanish by Pablo Medina A man and a woman walk down the streetlaughing. They make plans.They had a grand time in the hotel where they made loveand they laugh, make another date for tomorrow. Life is wonderful.Tomorrow he’ll be laid out in a funeral home one hourbefore their tryst (the scaffoldingbroke loose…
One father culled talons from an eagle’s claw and strung them around our necks. Another father watched a dogwood tree burn slowly through the night. The yellowjacket froze in the space between our faces, two numb fingers brushing the edge of a sharp tack. You spoke softly—each word blinking hard then opening wide its soft eyes, baring for the…
I’ve got an arrow here.Loving the hand that sent itI the dart revere.—Emily Dickinson If it is attention that condemns me,then attention may absolve me: you pierced me cleanly,the hollow daylight proving I never flinched, a movementwhich implies anticipation. I held still. I held onto another love. I turned my back to openings—to doorwaysyou may…
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.—My memory of my father’s voice message Up the sky-escalator to meet his maker.An angel measures the draperies of my dad’s inscape with tailor’s tape, palpates the spot near his unfaith.Rate your life’s pain. Weighty, dad answers.A brain paint-peeled & snakebit at the end, he says. Like freebasing…
What are we doing in the world? In the world,where the children are playing world. Where they drivetheir little toy cars and trucks upand down the steep imaginary roadsof the mind— maneuvering around the oncoming traffic that barrels down around endless hairpin turns— What are we doing in the world? Where our neighbor’s girls operate on their dolls— Having laid them outin the late sideways light of Spring on a tousled,pink quilt on the grass, they amputate a…
Since I forget the namesof my lovers, my favorite dog,the flowers and constellationsI walk on earth like a spy from silence. In Walmart I forget my change.In sex I forget to cry out.In a dream I don’t know when to wake. I read endlessly, underlining every third word,but it is only the book of night…
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