Poetry

rain frog          thorn bug          tent bat along a broken mosaic    a spongy    ever-dwindling path soaring trees     woody buttresses      their massive twisted fins lofty crowns     shoulder to shoulder     climbing lime-green vines     restless palms     one…

I don’t know, he said, I guess it’s something I’d like, an ocean with such ugly fish down there dark, ones with barbs and lantern lights affixed to their heads. It’s all I got, said the voice. And this wet suit to go with it, this backpack of oxygen, this camera, this knife. Be careful….

They mouthed the surface of the creek for nymphs tasting their temporary life or striders sculling the tension that was neither water nor air but border, merely. The way a dream nibbles at awareness, the sunnies dared the surface. From the footbridge I saw them school in the little depth below the watercolor that was…

          Is the sleeve of that racist century as wrought or gold-chained     as Henry VIII’s who strolls in and says          I’m what matters,               intestines sagging, the regal spittle     bound to stick on dog fur? That’s where…

Every once in a while, it’s true: I get sick of dying. Iambic ghosts choiring                                        their lovely, churchless songs, All the lines of the poem leaning toward terminus Like rows of low windbent weeds—    …

Alright, I’ll tell you the weirdo dream I had, but before I unwind that yarn, let’s twist our common thread. Like you, I stare plumb through the wall sometimes, because I’m thinking of a tree and a little tenant house beside it, and you-know-who on the stone step watching as I pretend I’m a butterfly…

What I see in one eye and not the other. A moon that slices away at the dark. The past and what’s coming. Unlike the little hunchbacked shrew hopping mindless across the road. Or crickets, eating anything in their path, gardens, grass, each other. We’re different. We anticipate. For the others, it’s the music without…

  for Memory and Oxford   “Apart from her roles as wife and mother, Doris did not play a large part in the stories of Greek mythology.” —anonymous online source   She was a type, all right, an Okie from her daddy’s side, when she met Nereus, maybe even a little flashy looking, the bright…

after James Agee that couple on the road could no more slow their hearts, slough their fear          than could you doff your privilege, un- lace the corset of skin that cuts you to the quick so here you are in the thick of it the sun-bleached air the hard-scrabble beauty of…