Poetry

artist unknown, Venice It’s an enormous canvas. Beyond rows of oars men stab and thrust, grab each other’s throats, pitch bodies into the water where they sink or else are driven under by keels and pikes. It feels odd standing in this great hall where another tourist is being warned, No photograph. The flash gives…

circa 1946 Just after his release Mas took a psychological test. Three questions he never forgot: Do you think people are out to get you? Do you feel you are being followed? When you see a crowd of strangers walking toward you, do you try to avoid them? To all three he answered yes. And…

With the leaping spirits we threw                   our voices past Three Kings to sea—                                     eyes wide open with ancestors. We flew air and water, lifted                   by rainbows, whales, dolphins thrashing                                     sharks into birthways of the sea’s labor: Rapanui born graven                   faced above the waves—umbilical                                     stone; Tahiti born from waka: temple…

I thank God for el Mercado, in Santurce, where we filled our bags. I thank God for the chopped translucence of onions above which we poured oregano & salt. & I thank God for yellow oil in the pot, the buckle & hiss of heat under a pan. I am thankful for the kitchen table:…

A cop car rounds a corner, headlights throw a man’s silhouette large against an apartment building. A window opens from his rib. A woman steps through and pushes off the ledge. She floats four stories. Doesn’t flail. Doesn’t scream or scratch at passing bricks. She is sure as gravity, her fall as inevitable. She floats….

I woke up this morning with my mouth full of words Like “Crenellated battlements,” and cranciousness And bicycles with “derailleur” and flywheels and tappets. These words must be escapees from where they grew bored. Stuck in the same old sentences they decided to break out And now they are fugitives in my mouth and ears….

Avila, 1982 When the civil guards approached me and asked me for my papers, I recalled the face of a sunny saint being disemboweled on the rack. Widows in perennial black, addicts of prayer, find comfort here the way monks in hair shirts must take to penance, or me, addled in my blissed-out days in…

I didn’t know then how couples flow into the space around each other— how Max’s sweet exuberance was only made possible by Rose’s bitter chill. Who knew what that whole generation of refugees had gone through? I knew nothing about them— only that Max had been to Alaska, had prospected for gold. Said words like…

Just because you think a man is dead doesn’t mean you should leave him. Really, the dead have a lot of advantages over the living. Think about your dad. How much better you get along with him now that he’s passed. It’s time’s way. And why in the end everything turns out okay. A lot…