Poetry

“I thought a bench was a simple possibility: one could sit on it.” —Rosmarie Waldrop I took a picture of the bench from behind because I wanted to show the vantage rather than what was seen from it—in this case, a stand of trees angling outward, away from the bench, over the river. Although I…

Never a question of staying, the end never named. His words move my hand, he speaks then listens, the lid pried free, the brood-hum now open to the sky. They have a very nice sense of proportion & the space required for the movement of bodies. My ruler measures the gap, I count each worker…

Friends should learn to think differently about leaving— everything goes away: the sun, clouds, even stars become nothing after a while                            *   *   * Remember when we found that old mill by the stream? The fallen walls, leaves dropping, ancient mounds of archeology Remember being 13? The angle of the light? And how we…

translated from the Greek by Stratis Haviaras & Dana Bonstrom Now that all is moot, finished, yes: a handful of Londoners, yourself included, can haunt the world again from the safety of your clubs. Just who do you think you are? Wagering other people’s money on matters of such revolting precision Imaginative in your benevolence…

The map’s measurements mimic . nothing in the world The field’s new furrows . follow the wandering gulch Sometimes sentences and lines . need to be the same Daughters suffocate . beneath their fallen fathers Anything you can explain . I don’t need to hear . Unpredictably angled . strings crisscross a grid The three…

We play this same game at the end of every day, which you love as much as I: I have you in a gentle headlock, I’m hard against you, my mouth, my breath a graze from your ear— but I’m not talking to your ear, I’m pouring pictures direct to your tender brain: I will…

if this is insecurity, call it, then, the nature of arrogance if you stare at any photograph long enough, it will begin to flutter, & eyes inside will nearly wink there are only two ways of reading this, & i have already forgotten the second one every time i ride a bus from one city…

When I was riddled with pizzazz and hot to trot, gnats and mosquitoes didn’t bother me, but now I’m past the middle of that carrying on, so long immunity. Bugs bite parts once sleek as that trickster snake, and still fair, the blush of apples, where curves quiver. So says the mower in our garden….

In the Swedish film, an island community. And the island grows smaller, it seems, as the bodies of animals are discovered, broken, littering the tidy, hushed landscape— a pile of eight sheep, slashed throats, eyes starless and sentimental; a dog hanging from a pine bough, swaying cord cutting a thin neck. Blind passion, great costs….