Poetry

on the wall by the fireplace we can fill it      with stones, flowers, toenails, pebbles of shit     or scat      or something else Anglo-Saxon   and indispensable. No books on Texas      birds, no botany, the rock is called a batholith, stands 1,825 feet, a large, solid granite dome          where white men fled captivity,…

Chaos ignites temperaments. Charge out each day and plunder.   Bones be buried. Bones be broken. Renounce blood, a larger black.   Each morning renews chaste vows, only to be unbridled by afternoon.   The way an ox would plow a field drunk youngsters prove their anger.   A cadence of steel coffins hidden by…

Furious snow cardinals & diode array. Methuselah walks by me in coats. Vast brackets of light. Those sugar packets on the road:                                               a branch encased in ice would almost seem to indicate them. The first bomb opens itself in space. By red by half-silvered light—“to home.” How that a life were but a place?…

Bones like a bird’s you quicken your hands, flit and mock,   take stock of who’s watching— every move a melodrama, a poised   snap, a shot that shapes you as the lead of a film no one   can stop. Your fingers play invisible keyboards,   your toes point, turn out in stance, your…

We would like to grow herbs, cooking herbs and chamomile and lavender, and keep birds, farm fish, collect dogs and cats and horses. There isn’t enough room in the apartment. We need a plant to cover the litter boxes in the bathroom. There’s an unfinished birdcage you’ve built in the bedroom and now you’ve started…

for Grace There’s an oak leaf, one     caught in the latch on the door lodged like a letter in a letter box. It knocks slowly, eight-prongs     the wind tips it back, head leaning away     stem like a tail, wind knocking softly      turning over the life of a tough brown leaf. Stronger than a grasping hand,…

Made by what I read    Slippage           To think             a fall broken                 as not a         stumble                         but a certain voice                     among the trees Listen              Listen            I am the ghost of undivided attention             I am     what Saul saw on the road near Damascus I am the ancient sigh pushed             out on the…

Because the bullet was a dream before it was a bird. Because the bullet was a dream before it alighted in the child’s body while he looked at a pigeon wobbling through the air. Because the child has moved into photographs on mantels and the dreamer’s hands are folded in his lap and have not…

After Posidippus   When my ship was wrecked on the rocks, and I died, Leophantos, a traveler, found me. Long on the road, he mourned by my side and wrapped a shawl around me. Alone by the sea he buried me and offered up his prayer. But I, too small to tell him of my…