Poetry

Today I plant sassafras and pickerel. Tomorrow, wild sarsaparilla and checkerberry. Will they take root here? The crows enter my yard. They remind me of ink slabs Chinese calligraphers used—not until mixed with water did their black ink breathe and broth. Each morning, goat hairbrush in hand, they sat near willows, against a dropping moon,…

I rode the Greyhound watching the twitchy things of the North give way to the sticky, bloodshot things of the South. No ground so burnt there’s not a church where I heard the Reverend Al Green amplify, rarefy, and glorify the word so that we were in some state of sweating July. The ashy black…

A whole lifetime in the middle, no wonder we crave and fear beginnings and ends. We want to see Highway 80 vanish into the Pacific waves, Tolstoy as a baby trying to hold a pencil. And this endless mess of photos, could that really be Grandfather dressed like a little girl, Mother with flowers in…

I’m tired, spent, really, but don’t say much, lean toward the rookeries, spirulina days, effect trooperish refrains, undelinquent and pressed, not hardy but persistent still, in a fading way, feel dunked, put upon, dry-hearted often in face of grief, bear trouble poorly, issue bulletins to the Dept of the Interior requesting stays and clarifications, sent…

These strollers here under the arcades, these anonymous passersby, how would you greet them if met at parties except in banter? “Are you vegetarian? Virgo? Rhesus? An alto? Mesomorphic? Melancholic? Here’s someone sanguine. Phlegmatic? Rheumatic? Optimist? You must be my- opic. Blotto? Sit down. A zero? Now, now.” But no, they walk past each other,…

What ghost threw                                my hand across my face? He roamed my sleep in that room dark under pines. Another cried softly for an hour, till comforted. Lakes, mansion, woods, studios— all of it loss                     and the love of art. Mornings I’d stare at an old story: the touring car draped in a tarp,…

We would walk with it into the open Look down and read the shadows Of the clouds passing over it The birds sang dial tones The infected birds Gray sentences uncurled As we smoked our manuscripts The cattle went mad  Their blue lips smiling At a sign in the distance We slaughtered the distance It…

By perspective, I meant how                                                      eventually every landscape wouldn’t have to include defilement, or any other outrage, getting smaller each time we looked back on it,                                                            or forgot not to. An armload of millet and sunflowers could, despite the fact of July, just like that, turn the room October. I believed suffering happened…

All Winter I’ve Waiteds. The Then You Came Backs. Wands. Wounds. Tarot Cups. Lisps. Strapless Dresses. Sylvia Tears. Conjugations. Anne Frank’s Looms. Another Man Done Gone. Kleenex After Sex. Mrs. Manner’s Accidents. The How Funerals. The Greedy Toos. Freaks. The What Happens Every Afternoon. The Purple Spot on My Neck. The Eye Tricks. Children’s Bibles….