Poetry

  • The Avalanche

    He braked the old green Chevy     on the side of a mountain         somewhere out West and bet my mother he could     start a serious avalanche         by kicking a single rock into another no she said no please don’t Dan     please don’t start an avalanche         please and in the back…

  • Fuses

    The last spike hammered into the last day meant not one more Chinese laborer would be lowered in a basket down the side of a mountain to separate the mountain from itself with a brand of dynamite that knew its own mind, never hesitating to render asunder whatever the Whiteman’s God had assembled on that…

  • Ode to the Guitar

    for Flavio The plucked strings tremble & traverse the heart, back through that other strong muscle singing blood & guilt. Press a finger down & the message changes into blame & beauty, into the scent of a garden rising from peat moss & brimstone… the frets & shaped neck worked & caressed into a phantom…

  • Life of the Senses

    1. Over and over, I think we have come to a place like this, dead sound stopping the soul in its eager conversations Or, a classical theme repeated over and over interrupted by a voice disguised as human: Please stay on the line Your call is very important to us 2. Don’t know if I…

  • The Alarm Clock

    Two weeks after her husband’s death, just before I left for the airport, my mother said, But how will I get to the lawyer’s on time tomorrow? I said Well you’ll leave the house in plenty of time, she said No no, how will I wake up in time? You’ll set the alarm, Mom, and…

  • Mozart and the Mockingbird

    This morning, I turned down Mozart to listen                         to a mockingbird perched on a wire outside my window. Poor Mozart. Dead,              he was much the worse for comparison. But as soon as I lowered the music,                                      the mockingbird flew.              He had been listening to Mozart.

  • Stars

    When my mother turned sixty, she kissed the invisible stars on the foreheads of her two grown men and deemed them     worthy stars The sky, a vaulted blue dome, empties itself and fills Pyongyang with quick, fluid stars Tonight, longing fans out like a silk curtain over an empty room; a girl’s eyes burn…

  • Dar He

    When I am the lone listener to the antiphony of crickets and the two wild tribes of cicadas and let my mind wander to its bogs, its sloughs where no endorphins fire, I will think on occasion how all memory is longing for the lost energies of innocence, and then one night— whiskey and the…