Poetry

sole residue of written wisdom as actualized by things. Christ if the tulips shudder. Here the grass is rain-flattened and may not re-spring. What can one person say to another? The master is the master? The children are playing on the shore? To this language, the heron on the sandbar does not answer. Objects sought…

In the first weeks, they wanted for nothing. This is how it always is— bountiful body, ravenous laws. They watched at the curb as the horse parade passed: colorful flags, fanfare, such clapping. They called to the elderly couple across the way, raising their pale hands each morning and evening, as to an old question….

The glass shone cold with water fresh from somebody’s old “family spring” west of the Blue Ridge. I drank half in one continuous gulp—not greed, but because the day was hot. Then, out of breath or the telephone rang, I don’t remember— I stopped. I put the glass down to mist on the counter as…

In the dream there’d been difficulty— tidal wave topside while elsewise the cat had to be taken away and left yet again on a farm framed by a row of small houses. A tangled mass hissed and we woke and went on and found a pay phone, called the weather station. Wondered what was for…

Generous I may have been, amnesiac I became. Autumn fattened and thinned; I stared at the clock’s senseless hands. I let the girl in the market make change. I looked at my lists of medicines and the bottles on the shelf, but they seemed separate. In the bathroom mirror my face was suddenly antediluvian who…

What if they could speak?: the pawn shop menorahs       and samovars, the cherubs torn from their heavens, suspended forever in limbo, hanging       by five black strings thickened in dust, their gold wings flaking so close to earth; the jewel-       shaped chandeliers unmoored from ceilings; the salty waves in stasis on the black…

For a while I was dropped but I’m back on the assembly line. My boss is the Muse, who cites me for laziness and other offenses. I confess I try on the words in the back room sometimes, do a jig in front of the mirror, and cringe at the difference between what I am…

1. The cherry tree bends not from its fruit but cold. Cold has more desire than tree or beholder to make a pleasing form. I have made a decision to stand under what shelter might be offered by the tree and let all tropical routine submerge under the actual sap that gilds fruit and dream…

after John Clare All dark, and my feet against          the feed-room floor                   scuff cement, find their way          to the light, the switch, which flares on          with a snap of bird-                   wings’ nimble shuffle          and flight, the rafters blowing off feathers,          then my hands against                   the grain bin’s…