Poetry

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…

It happened to me once. Winter came and snow quilted every inch. I stood on the soap box as I was told, and made staggering accusations. The public ignored so I retreated behind the potted yew. I was waiting for a moment I was supposed to have on a balcony overlooking the giant gridded landscape….

How long can one man’s lifetime last? —Wang Wei Long enough, he said to our tears, to know all of it is a gift. We wanted to hold him back from the dying he was busy doing, nine months of working his way through the Book of Subtractions: first the relished taste of food and…

For dermatology, for the betterment Of medical science, Joseph Towne produced Over five hundred models of skin disease, Forming those faces from beeswax and resin, Applying disease with spatulas and knives— Lesions and rashes, pustules, and the chancres Of unchecked syphilis, especially those On faces disfigured by heredity, Bad luck, or unwisely satiated lust, An…

Below this knoll a man kneels. Face close to the earth, he works soil like a potter works clay, kneading and shaping until hands slowly open, reveal a single green stalk before he palms himself up the row as if he hauls on his back morning’s sun-sprawl, a bringer of light he cannot bring here…