Poetry

When I was ten (no, younger than that), my mother tried to kill herself (without the facts there can’t be faith). One death or another every day, Tanqueray bottles halo the bed and she won’t wake up all weekend. In the myth book’s color illustration, the poet turns around inside the mouth of hell to…

Percussion at bedtime! A fist-sized rock, well-aimed, wrecked two windowpanes and missile-cruised my living room, bestowing transparent sharpness; ricocheted; reposed on a walnut bookshelf thick with history (the Black Jacobins, class war in ancient Greece). Glittering quills adorned a potted palm. The projectile excited scrutiny: its mongrel shape lopsided— round, then sharp; its colors muddy,…

I’m up in Squaw Valley—yes the name is utterly inappropriate in these late twentieth-century days, but hey, history isn’t pretty especially place names. Monument Valley has no monuments The Eiffel Tower or Tour Eiffel just stands there squat on the ground, then rises grid and girders. The difference between New York and Paris is landmarks….

God works in mysterious ways, Father said, but He’s not half as mysterious as your mother. He said, Let there be light. And there was light. I don’t see anything mysterious about that. He did what He said He’d do. Your mother says, Let’s not be late for the movie. Yet she takes so long…

It was near here. In a street similarly shining, going to the movies, and when you asked your new acquaintance, what does [sic] mean? he left off quoting The Paradiso: “sic transit gloria mundi for example,” and you felt stupid— Then the Callery pears, fruitless clouds of urban bloom stood up. Other days lit, globed…

Lately, too much disturbed, you stay breathing in me and I believe you. How could I not feel you were misspent, there by books stacked clean on glass, or outside the snow arriving as I am still arriving. If the explanations amount to something, I will tell you. It is enough, you say, that surfaces…

Call me Responsible.                                    (Like all of them                                    it loves an exam.) Pleased to meetcha. A charming living space.                                    Thank you.                                    All original, naturally. Tongue?                      Not telling. (Funny little factory.)                                    I know my diagnosis.                                    Friendlier than the world.                                    Friendlier than the world. Well do yourself a favor they say…

Sometimes I touch the cleaner. Sometimes an hourly vole shares the bed and wife with me. Once I sat up suddenly and spoke it: crowned platelets inherit the passenger bin. I believe the precise moment of Rapture is felt not to occur, the Rind of Incidence I made up in the first place. On a…

                    1. There goes a difference between his mother’s death in the shallow woods by shots or hacking late autumn/winter and tufted oak leaves framing her and His mother’s death of disease in the windless cube and pinned to the line bed stand cluttered with spectral elixirs and the carefree agents of interiority tapping on…