Poetry

  • Around here

    Down at the beach.The lake trying to wash the moon off its back.The moon trying to ride the horse of the lake.Me lighting a candle and sticking it in sand.Another. Making a circle for the windto burn its fingers on. For the moonto read a flickering elegy to itself.The infinite same syllable of the surf.Is…

  • That Halloween 

    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…

  • Birthday Poem

    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…

  • A Man and a Woman

    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…

  • Zugzwang

    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…

  • Dart

    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…

  • Alzheimer’s translation: Homophonic VI

    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…

  • The World

            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…