Poetry

  • Sutures

    I had torn the quads in both legs and had to be poured into the back seat so when we parked at Home Depot, I was being slid out on a plastic sheet when a red sports car pulled in next to us, the door swung open and a hand cast out a folded wheelchair…

  • New England Slate Pane

    Mom has already made arrangements for a spot inside the churchyard wall among the old Yankee slates, some fallen, and the granites from foreign places, tilted by frost. A mason sets them straight again each spring. Perennials for the formal beds accepted with gratitude; no other plantings allowed. Cut flowers may be laid on the…

  • Bat

    You’d think he was nervous the way he fits and starts. His skittery dodges, dipping below the visible, make us wait           for a scratch on our eye which comes to show he’s gone again elsewhere. How does he find his way? you said, and I saw night close in           like a room with…

  • Some Writers in Wartime

    What is essential as breath reduced to a squabble about moral parity to hold a brief for the party that orders death. Moral parody: ours is but to cook, serve, clear, speak when spoken to. * We will not swell the glory chorus, slaughter calling to slaughter like lovers possessed. Nor will we turn away….

  • More than Peace and Cypresses

    More than peace and cypresses, emboldened hares at the field’s edge, Father, I love gallantry, tenacity, the sanguine heart before the ledge: the artist questing and failing— the feet of bested Icarus plunging into the sea’s crest— the artist triumphing: a page of fire from the book of heroes. More than light-hooved gazelles, views from…

  • A Spell to Wake My Brother

    We will weave through the labyrinth of headstones to clear the patch of soil where you rest, to plant a tall palm with leaves that know that north sea breeze, to roast a suckling pig. The blood of this pig will mingle with your bones, tickle your limbs, awake the bomba y plena pulse. We…