Poetry

On the first day God began splittingthings, and time began.The angels gathered in little groups—even though it was forbidden—and said things like: remember when deathand life were the same?Remember the language of trees?Remember love before hate became its own thing? God said remembering was just for Sundaysbut people were already beginning to ignore him.Remember God?…

My mother has never died yet.My father has died oh so many years ago.I have never died yet though I have not died from trying.What is the most profound tragedy that can befall a family?And the dream answered: The death of the primary wage-earner.My sister has never died yet though she believes she has been…

a delicate box. The child inside it. It’s okay to not think abouthow the child came to be in the box. It’s okay to focus solelyon what the child offers: the sound of fireweed bending in wind,yesterday’s pages torn from their binding, a small hand. Yesterdaythere was no sign of the child. No warning between…

“What’s for you won’t go by you,” he told me, the great, recalcitrant songwriter so heavy-browed with doubt and kindness. I was eighteen and had taken a Greyhound from New York to Nashville to find him, my corduroys indistinguishable from my self. That whole wolf-on-skates year his music had saved me, made me feel something…

I found a boat tied upat the water’s edge,rocking, rope frayed, oarsbanging in their locks. At home, you neverknew what mighthappen. A surprisea minute, they say. In the distancedark clouds, no traceof the other shore.It might have been wise to havebrought a compassand life jacket,to have packed a lunch.

We’d only just begun to scratch the floors with our own furniture, unfold the box flaps  and hang the walls to look like our walls in the old apartment: familiar faces, fruits.  Then we heard it, the long scrapes in deep  grooves overhead. It came from the devil’s  peak, after we’d turned the bedroom into the samedark as the…

I search online for causes and find that most are tied to loss.A child, a parent, a friend, regret. For me, the I is lost. The most awful things happen hours after a session, not anotherfor a week or two. The Therapy Curse, I call it, covering the years I’ve lost. Sometimes I see angels,…

He’s wearing two watches,one set to the local time in New York,the other in Gaza. In a café with friends,waiting for his tea at the round table,and whenever his eyes fallon the dial of the Gaza watch, he can see the kidsof his Gaza neighborhood running in the alleys,girls playing hopscotch, boysplaying soccer. At night,…

Neighbors smuggle the sunthrough tunnelsbeneath the houses.The smoke of bombsdropped from the F-16shas covered the city’s sky.