Poetry

He was the first person I knew who spoke to God and to whom God replied. And he was the first person I knew who had written the great works of whomever you might name— mine own T. S. Eliot—though he affected no accent and wore a shrunken Grateful Dead T-shirt. It was not only…

Benny’s handsome, red brown like rust on a hoe. Empty headed cows loll in the pasture ignoring the mule’s bray. Light shines as easily through a cicada’s husk clinging to a tree as through a bottle of liniment or a glass of tea on the dinner table. The hems of his overalls fray and tickle…

Being red is the color of a white sun where it lingers on an arm. Color of time lost in sparks, of space lost inside dance. Red of walks by the railroad in the flush of youth, while our steps released the squeaks of shoots reaching for the light. Scarlet of sin, crimson of fresh…

The best boys were called: to buck hay till age seventy-five, to castrate a steer & rescue a breach-birth calf     under a dusty light bulb, father eight or ten daughters & whip sense into their heads (their character would be their dowry), & one smoking bull of a son,     inhale a cyclone    …

Kimber Lester, my student, while you cannot actually write a poem at least write a sentence to tell me why in the eighth stanza of this text the image of a bloody dagger hangs before me? The soufflé, my thought, has fallen. My own poem was lost on the plane from Finland. Under the hungry…

Since you ask: In the walls Of my country lie buried Patrons of the arts; In the floors are prisoners Who stole bread. The sky So close—or I am tall— I have to duck. My wide Cravats flutter In my face. I’m sorry, This is a love letter With a touch of a limp. I…

The world is not limited to literature. I was sitting in the Adirondack chair when it floated by. Mother and Father were on the other side of the lot building a wall out of small pleasantly shaped rocks. I came to them and said, “It’s in front of us,” the sun burning like an absence….

Now on this table a small bowl of salt, and I think of the lagoon, quiet at midnight, in moonlight, you in that doorway, your sarong a flare: if I needed you you were there, offering. The body is water and salt. A breathing sea. Why do we think we know better than the body?…

A large steel knife hovers above Main Street. All night it goes house to house, poking its glowing eye through each roof in its turn. It looks in on the accountant, sleeping fingers tabulating debt on a quilt. The chief of police is safely asleep with his secretary. It was never about love. Grandmother’s in…