Poetry

Just there, deep in shadow, the peeling paint of an old door to a carriage                    house behind untrimmed cypress branches,a shade somewhere between turquoise and navy wrung by rain to                    namelessness,a color we can no longer locate on the spectrum, the lost blue of tenderness                    and sorrow overlain with exaltation,a door we walk past once in the gathering…

Like a pomegranate, I wore my garnets quietly. Nudelip, beige tongue. I took the shape of clouds passing by. I was a tool for divination—you used me to findwater & blamed me when I drank. We dreaded you together. Still, I kept my smile on, even whenyou hid the key to my mouth. I was…

His beard’s still dark but a little grayer. I, too, have a gray hair or twotwisting through the dark ivy between my legs. Honestly, I’m surprisedhe recognizes me standing up. He looks well, fit, his smile as generousas I remember, all those times on my back staring up at a faded pictureof hot air balloons…

When she comes to take youaway she asks if your ringcomes off. You twist and twist. Yousurrender. Celeste saysit will come off later. In those next hoursso many doors open,none of them returning you to me. A manin the atrium belowplays piano— an ambling, jazzy, winespritzer. Noiseto fill the void. I’ve already forgotten her face,…

A mast year for acorns, so like marbles and so manywe’re afraid of falling. I walk sideways down the hill, holding a long stick; Kate goes before mewearing her orange knit cap. Everything alive is changing. Everythingun-alive is changing. What did we think to stop? The broken trees lean on the unbroken trees,which will one…

So, I’ve grown less apparent apparently:the young men walk their dogs, and when our dogs meetwe look at the dogs without raising our eyes to each other. The fathers stand outside the elementary school laughingwith the mothers—Exactly, one of them says to the other—my passing presence faded like a well-washed once-blue cotton shirt. Finally, I…

After seven nights of silence, he woke to seven drawingsof a ram, pinned along his walls. Spit six seeds in a tin cup and trailed his hands along the white hallsinging about something to do with morning. My father sat his easel in the musicaland was a farmer, but wanted to be a painter. When…

What have you done?Opened this box of sound,warped like sand beneath water,remember that? The wavesof perception moving youaway from me. We grow farther apart,but we are equal in our ignoranceof how. No change there. Like celestialbodies distancing—like the animalsin autumn. How? This knowledge,how will you pin it down?How hard I look to trace the first…

After the protest at dusk, two policemen on horsebackclosing the park approached me and Vita and offered us rides home. Sheepish but game,we grabbed hold of their leather and galloped across field and hillto the edge. Gassed and smiling, we waved goodbye. Jim was waitingat the restaurant. I wanted to tell him there’s no heat…