Poetry

I don’t think the Mayflower’s passengers boarded with any inkling they would be revered. We imagine their journey with clean sails and blue sky, and the galley was probably filthy. Meriwether Lewis finally reached the Pacific after writing those dutiful descriptions of routes and rivers and new species, and just carved his name in a…

set out across the fields anonymous, drawn inward like a sea of dusk beneath the cribbed retreat of sun. Remember us against the vinyl in that summer like an apocalypse across the sheetless rising chipped repeat of artificial light of grocery lists wrung. Last night and last night’s last night you cheat the snow, my…

Halliday’s in Italy and Koch is dead (though I admit Koch never meant much to me). What matters is he made Halliday feel understood in (I imagine) much the way Halliday made me. I read him and knew I was free. A few years later he read me and just often enough responded enthusiastically (all…

Friday night, my divorced brother trying out his new girlfriend on us, the oldies funk band so loud all we can do is dance and wait for a break— she sways, arms tight to her chest, fists shaking imaginary maracas. My brother’s steps have not changed—some vague C & W hip twitch from wife #1….

So hot today I wear my new sandals. It’s been a tough morning at Home Sweet Home, wondering why no one talks about Jesus’ teenage years—was he happy? sad? And why are the steamed tomatoes shelved next to the raisins? Sounds stupid, but I’d like even a glimpse of Plan A. I needed to talk…

from the “I dreamed . . .” ad campaign, 1949–1969 I dreamed I went to the opera in my Maidenform Bra.     But I really went to the operating table in my         Maidenform Bra. I dreamed I went shopping in my Maidenform Bra.     But I really went shouting in my Maidenform Bra. I…

Great things begin In the periphery. Meanwhile my father Works third shift At the mustard plant. He’s around my age. He’s finished For the night. He revs his truck, Waiting for the heat. The ladder shakes In its rack on top. The heat is dusty, Coming on. All this Can happen Without us, just Out…

“The evident shift of pronoun (what I now mean by ‘we’) is a clear question about place.” —J. H. Prynne “Don’t talk about it—be about it.” —Busta Rhymes I’ve somehow hummed myself to your darling world. I would do if you weren’t bent on the sods where you ran me human & blew towns unwise…

    I’m sitting in a London lecture theater and thinking of my mother, dead just these three weeks—     and by the way, reader, this will not, repeat, not, be one more crappy poem about a dying mother!—     as I listen to Dr. David Parker speaking on “Love and Death in Dickens,” how the…