Poetry

Break

In the middle of the hunt, I must excuse myself, and all through silent polished halls feel the dog-breath on my sling-back heels. Being flesh, being always hungry, I mostly swallow what is thrown. But am not glutton, but furnace burning punishments. And know the protocol for butchery, but cannot call it to my mind….

An After-Dinner Speech

                                     loquitur:                 Anton Raphael Mengs                                               Court-Painter elect to                                               Charles III of Spain Signori, you have my gratitude for the signal honor of this banquet, the learned discourses,                    as well as, of course, the great distinction of your company. “Old Mengs,” you call me among yourselves, and it is true: I am                   …

Last Draft of the Day’s Light

Not wilderness exactly open country a wooded valley and the river in it waterfall and towpath footbridge     lockhouse a canal that runs to Cumberland beside the Potomac     not wilderness     you know that bounded parkland with your neighborhood above it stage set by some Luminist where you describe the hour     convinced no calendar can register a…

Sonnet for August

Arias, not only of voice, but as when tan grasses blow and bend yellow and pink then darken then yellow, or someone’s betrayal fills another with darkness—so I have felt my fill. At the opera this week Pagliacci— heartbreaking, sexy—lover, husband, wife, another lover scorned. The week before the town gossip: a friend having left…

from Blue Front

                                                                        lynch not as in pin, the kind that keeps the wheels turning, and not the strip of land that marks the border between two fields. unrelated to link, as in chain, or by extension whatever connects one part to another, and therefore not a measure of chain, which in any case is…

The Birthmark

You showed up late and angry. You shat upon the floor. With that, how could we fail to recognize you? Your father, grief’s tent show wizard, the long connected silks pouring from his sleeve. And your mother? Haven’t you known me wholly as the spider knows each tilting and imperfect room she sews to be…

Certitude

(July evenings occur as a name repeated.) Strange benefit of geography. He studied me at mirrors but recalled only photographs and houses leaning seasonal (a deluded shoreline). Ascertain bird or cicada near. Awaken to a darkened background clouded North by noon. Here is a reverse. We take of gales and a landscape of driving rain….