Poetry

I. What appears untidy and lacking in design is in fact intentional: quiet milkweed beside the conflagration of red fireweed; the brackish Schuylkill feeding stately oaks. John knew the author lays his borders, then steps back. General Washington, strolling the overgrown river trail, pursed his lips; what sort of father lets his seed run wild,…

Every November 21, I take my mother to the cemetery to visit my father, a man who knew little of joy or the good life, and my mother kneels, says a prayer right there where the lip of his headstone begins, and I know her knees will hurt, but she stays, eyes closed, trying to…

My birthplace is incidental. Never forget your Mother Country. Our town was nowhere, nothing but dirt. Our village was known for its temples and ponds. The way my mother ran the house was backwards. You don’t taste fish like that here. I don’t remember what my father said. We memorized everything our father said. Chinese…

When hope forms a bud of prayer, who picks it? Words in all languages yearn toward the stars, confessing and beseeching. I talk to a masculine higher power half god, half human. When he sits calm and golden, spine straight as the Buddha’s, my own spine yearns upward toward the clean sky of his face….

Love not the rider but the old rider, the ghost in the saddle: Obey that ghost. A good horse runs even at the shadow of the whip. But we are not good horses. We bolt. We stand still in bad weather. We rely on things we know are unreliable, it feels so good just to…

Retinal snowfall, anything that slips, where children kick a snowman in the dim winter increment, the gray of 3 p.m. Two red cars, one blue. White wing that dips and opens softly in the eyes’ ellipse, an n dimension furling at the rim— a down is paling—shyer motions limn, shyest motions adumbrate the tips— the…

In the B movie of our lives, there are no panoramas; our limitations have perfected the close-up. Pain is confined to what is visible: slump of the left shoulder, elbow on the table. There’s only room for subplot this side of the proverbial tracks. Sound of vengeance like a passing train, sweet and noble journey…

How many hours did I lie in bed, thought stapling my sixteen-year-old arms to the sheets, thought’s curare, when I finally dialed Tami Jamison, numbing my lips too much to speak? How often did I think, “I’m dead,” feeling my strength leak away, phlegm drown my lungs, sarcomas thrust like red toads up out of…

My father rises each morning to the fourteen varieties of banana trees he’s cultivated with unrivaled care, each tree casting shade across our lawn, each racimo an offering my father hacks with his machete, a small cruelty he performs like a doctor circumcising a newborn, though I like to think he is unburdening these trees,…