Poetry

How did the people realizethe steeple needed repair? They prayed below for what stood above.They hired a steeplejack to go and see. Before descending he took a lookat the towers of Boston to the north and skyward at contrails of flights.He paused to consider the damage. They prayed against the worst they could imagine.They imagined…

You’re kept in capsules on the bathroom counter, a synthetic strain of vitamin A, sealedfor potency. Your purpose is to shieldthe face from signs of aging. Over-the-counter lacks the power existing in medical grade— though too much, over time, can blur the vision, incite a kind of skin-peeling conditionor frail the bones. Your purest form betrayed      the man who…

Before your birth,                   I marked you as my own,the way I marked                    your mother before hers.Inscribed on every                    cell of every bone,the standard of my family                    never blurs.I coil between the                    makings of your bedand in the small hours                    whisper you awake.I poison every                    sentence in your headand all those comforts                    other people take.Eat salmon, buy a doodle,                    down the pillsthe doctor tenders…

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…

a delicate box. The child inside it. It’s okay to not think abouthow the child came to be in the box. It’s okay to focus solelyon what the child offers: the sound of fireweed bending in wind,yesterday’s pages torn from their binding, a small hand. Yesterdaythere was no sign of the child. No warning between…

“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…

I found a boat tied upat the water’s edge,rocking, rope frayed, oarsbanging in their locks. At home, you neverknew what mighthappen. A surprisea minute, they say. In the distancedark clouds, no traceof the other shore.It might have been wise to havebrought a compassand life jacket,to have packed a lunch.

We’d only just begun to scratch the floors with our own furniture, unfold the box flaps  and hang the walls to look like our walls in the old apartment: familiar faces, fruits.  Then we heard it, the long scrapes in deep  grooves overhead. It came from the devil’s  peak, after we’d turned the bedroom into the samedark as the…

Don’t let me end up a mural on Bryant St.Sound of a cheap lighter heating a joint. Hiss like deep inhale from a fresh joint,large worries can be made small with a mouth. Large worries made small in Sunday’s mouth:aunties’ lips while they sing, victory is mine I dream and sing, victory, today, is mine,eye…