Poetry

for Big Kenny, Little Kenny, and Joel3 Let us define a topology on the emotion L by declaring a sub-love L1, {Father, Son} to be an open love if and only if it either contains the open mouth kiss, Ø, or contains a series of emotional sequences L(f, s), where L(f, s) = hands open…

I was a fine altar boy, yes. They say I was also angelic, whatever it means this side of hell. My heroes have blood on their hands, & they all look exactly like me. A good suit. A tilt of the hat. A perfect, practiced smile. A white handkerchief in my breast pocket. Shoes polished…

Your green Arcadian hills do not interest me. The bird-bright eyes of every bird cared for, the way it is promised, the way it is written, everyone fat on their share of sun and seed. But I don’t see you in the dark streak of a cat crossing the street or the regal skunk in…

What might it be worth, this memento of my parents’ fifty-year marriage set in a diamond and sapphire crown, too large, too gaudy for my taste? I pass it under the partition to the jeweler who holds it to the light, then under the stern eye of his loupe. (Do you see it, young man?…

They return in my father’s ghostly sailboat, never steady, and in spring when my body is like a maple tree. Their purpose is to imagine the life we did not choose. One lives in a house with a cat, mountains in the distance. Their job is to tend my younger self: that other body. One…

World, I honor you. After everything we’ve been through I honor you and take you with me up the mountainside where we will live in wonderment. I take you to the desert where we shrivel like worms and become tongues for other people to kiss with. World, there are two baskets on my back. Fill…

In the tenement of the body generations have left their mark. On the stairwell of bones and the walls of flesh illegible words are scrawled in invisible ink. Windows look down on concrete gardens where live buds force themselves from sticks of trees. The genes are doing their scheduled work. Clutch the banister, hold on…

The years in Cuba are behind me now.Little spotted dogs, like tiny archangelsfollowed me around. I smelled of saltand palm oil. Given the nature of belief, the effectiveness of the divine will,unforgettable and strictlyfor the birds, I could be saidto be out of touch. I read Aeschylus— the diaries—Othello on the Beach,and Peter Gunn. I…

I want this life, full of dogs and people. The trick is not stopping. The dead sleep like bugs tucked into matchboxes while the living imitate life within the confines of pink and green lines denoting states. And I see you wandering the labyrinth of your dumb animal existence, your body warm, seeking exit. Somewhere…