Poetry

  • Crying Guy

    Apparently I am this crying guy,eyes full of analogue worldin the gap betweenolive leaves, acknowledging the sea,acknowledging allis fucked as kidsand philosophers say and know best,but okay,for a silver-leafed span,storied but brief in the gap betweenolive branch and grief,I make this noise.It is enough. In the gap betweenbefore and gone already, my fatherand sister were…

  • Poem

    How long would it take to growan Eastern White Oakeighty feet tall in your own backyard? And how longmight it take to burn oneall the way down? Could you shoot that on your phoneand let your battery run downuntil the ash at your feet is cool to touch? Even now, I canfeel grubs tunneling undertheir…

  • Tiny Broken Things

    Look                                        even birds sing in mourning.For the first time in years,a dove in the front yard builds nest,quietly patterns her return with bundles,weaves tiny broken thingsin work of a home.Whereas even the desert still offers itself, a pursuitunfolding unlike our bodies, just constellationsor chain link fences. The first time I hold between my palmsthe remnants of…

  • Ode to My Beautiful Veins 

    It’s what the phlebotomists always say, gushing when I slide up my sleeve, straighten my arm to boast bulging channels evergreen like spruce, leafy green like a spring mix, they bubble with delight palpating each protuberance, each tubular translucence swimming just beneath my skin, I suppose they are, perfectly plump for puncture, these outcurved creeks, transporters of blood—I’ve been thinking about blood, I’ve been thinking…

  • Proverbs

    Does the rabbit know the fox has also turned to snow?You don’t raise pigs for milk.Wind pursues what it has blown away. Rain fallsgently on the city and its sirens. We’re more water than dust.Every umbrella is a big top.And childhood is a name for a visionary state.If I didn’t try to teach, I’d have…

  • Superbloom, A Day After My Daughter’s Diagnosis

    They call this extravagance a “spectrum.”The pack of lupine howling out a deep-throated blues.The fiddleneck’s golden arpeggio.The hoot of fuchsia emanating from a parliamentof owl’s clover. Surely the wild hyacinthdidn’t mean to bring me to my knees,but here I am brushing bugs from tiny petalsas she wanders from one color to the next,declaring each to…

  • I Watched a Box Kite Swoon

    My mother has never died yet.My father has died oh so many years ago.I have never died yet though I have not died from trying.What is the most profound tragedy that can befall a family?And the dream answered: The death of the primary wage-earner.My sister has never died yet though she believes she has been…

  • Nashville, 1999

    “What’s for you won’t go by you,” he told me, the great, recalcitrant songwriter so heavy-browed with doubt and kindness. I was eighteen and had taken a Greyhound from New York to Nashville to find him, my corduroys indistinguishable from my self. That whole wolf-on-skates year his music had saved me, made me feel something…