translated from the French by Anne Atik Small crystal globe, Earth’s small globe, Through you I see My lovely glass bowl. We’re all locked up In your hard strict breast But so polished, so glossed Rounded by light. Like this horse running Or a lady who halts Or the flower on her dress A child…
My mother, given one name, exchanged it for another—Cohen for Carlan, less “Jewish”— and then for my father’s, whose Edelman had lost its E during the war for “business reasons.” What’s in a name? A Rosenblum without the blum would still a Rosen be. And what about me— Girl who met Goy, and gave away…
Rain spills leaf to leaf, rips some down the chilly greenblack air, falls and falls until it tamps October’s ripened ground that sponges up big plans. Sheet lightning popped across the water and rubbed things raw. The rain’s tinny cymbal-brushing rushes our nerves—we’ll live how long to hear it? Eighty today, Gracey on the back…
We all had to wear hats against the unvarying sun, Of course; but what was more significant, We’d had to bring with us—along with our freshly prepared Thoughts, wrapped up in the old way—bottled light To quench any thirst for knowledge that walking through the dry Valley of grayish terebinths and still Lizards on chunks…
tell me baby, what’s the matter now aw, you trying to quit me baby, but you don’t know how —Billie Holiday you can’t keep track of what’s what calling it what it’s not but stir shade & heavy cream into coffee & there’s breath-flash clean as knife-wind in the brain blown down the full length…
I wander down rows of plastic magic—glowing The boy comes home to a house too full of skulls and x-ray specs squeezed in next to sneeze dust decoupage and dead dreams, his mother nearly adrift in genie bottles, fake ice where flies swim frozen, on the dhurrie beige couch, worn down with being arrested, ruled…
1. My sea-blue father Left me Heart-burst Broke as a dune does Not glass, no cracks A surge of softness Slid down my throat To stifle, for good, Unendingness. 2. My own me was haunted by a shovel That chased me through the trees. It called Hurry home to Mummy And her theater of the…
Boarding the local at Midtown, all seats taken, he worked his way through the car with firm lean arm from his black T-shirt pulling him down the high stainless-steel handrail. Through that forest of bodies flashed his teeth: in spasms his lips would pull back and his eyes rage, then calm. Neat, perhaps thirty, the…
How anyone is happy in this country I don’t know. Any way you turn there is an edge, and everyone cocks a wind-burned hand over the brow to look out under it. The water flings petticoats of foam against wolf-headed rocks, and multicolored boats moored among others to the weathered pier bob dumb as soldiers….
No products in the cart.