Poetry

He has bribed the thorns to guard his poppies. They intoxicate the valley with their forbidden scent, reddening the horizon till it is almost as if they aren’t there. Maybe the guns guard only the notorious dreams in his head. The weather is kind to every bloom, & the fat greenish bulbs form a galaxy…

I was twenty-two, pretty maybe. It was a small town county fair: hot dogs, freak show, cotton candy, and heavy wheels laden with light, all tuned to the gaudy air. The Octopus—remember that one? Eight arms like extended girders, the thing was a metal Shiva juggling worlds: a cup spun at the end of each…

That there is no it, only is. —Richard Ford Two days ago, the sun Was a white stone in the leaden sky, The black-eyed Susans looked up And fell back wilted, just as I wilted And retreated to the air conditioner. Today a breeze has flowed from the northwest, It’s 28 degrees cooler, And I…

For Dewey Huston Tell me again about the butterflies, old friend of my father, bringer of tales, the gully, mossy rocks of the streambed, a cool breeze off the glacier high above, and suddenly butterflies everywhere as if the air you breathed were blossoming. I’ve seen so many things, you said. I wish I could…

As they loaded the dead onto the gurneys to wheel them from the university halls, who could have predicted the startled chirping in those pockets, the invisible bells and tiny metal music of the phones, in each the cheer of a voiceless song. Pop mostly, Timberlake, Shakira, tunes never more various now, more young, shibboleths…

He lies as still as possible and waits, then opens up his eyes. They’re everywhere. Millions, billions of motes, dead as the fates, hovering in the shafts of the morning air. Detritus of the universe, debris, the cosmic dust, polluted, dying, and dead, an endless sinking suffocating sea of sunlit dust that pins him to…

We have smoked all the cigarettes and sold the last pack years ago but I think you’ll thank us once you read the research—that much we took upon ourselves. So, remember: smoking kills. Beware of radiation, mercury and ground-level ozone, and for God’s sakes, wear your seatbelts in whatever kind of wacky cars you make….

Here, on the boulevard of run- amuck dreams, each stamped with a doll-like face you half- recognize as yours, the neon displays its chilly, self- possessed light. But the lips on the billboards are raspberry cream. They say Buy me or Be me, you can’t tell. You’re confused like mad again, in this night of…

They said that’s where Lulu went, that was the smell. Not rats. Fifty years go by. They say Yes. They don’t change their story, it’s true. A low cement block fence around the house, a collie dog bark, four kids. Not collie, but collie dog, Howdy as in Doody, The Stooges on someone else’s TV….