Poetry

Just give me a second to leap from your path each time your need to run me down speeds up, your just-hit-thirteen split- second shattered glass brilliance spilled. I’ve had to extricate you from yourself, to hoard each shard of hope, refusing your oceanic effusions, to find an inland calm where I can slowly wind…

When was the last time     you blew your nose         on a morning glory? Toddler sister picked the morning     glory—but not to do this,         but to do that. Squatting in the woods—     the broad soft leaf,         always most welcome. Your devout prayer is answered     when the broad leaf        …

The first item up for bid: a charming new gazebo. It’s made of wood that smells like wood that smells like gunpowder. Like everywhere, it is a place to sit. But this is different. I mean, you can put the cat in there, and before you know it, catheter. I think I didn’t say that…

Holding hands on the big wheel fifty feet above the Tuileries’ evening jasmine, I loved your play at fear, my brave stab at insouciance, the way the bright circuitry of Paris lay beneath us like the night sky, like the plan of our lives.

There’s no such thing as a rich sex life. Sex is poor. But sex isn’t the only thing That’s poor. Black-eyed Susans and purple loosestrife For instance haven’t got a prayer. The ring She wears causes a certain Platonic sting Like bonsai trees, which make me claustrophobic. Seeing her without it could make the angels…

Challenged in the marketplace About the flagrant masturbation The philosopher said he was sorry He could not assuage his hunger as easily. This philosopher of the marketplace Once famously appeared With a lamp in the broad daylight In search of one honest man. It was always the marketplace Where of course he had nothing to…

34. How could desire outrun satisfaction? Who is constantly solicited, never satisfied, driven, forced to it, forced to instruct: an albatross at his neck, provocative bird, for aimless years above his conquering ship, on motionless wings, before it lit—or would have lit—on Ramirez Island where it had taken off. An albatross mates for life and…

Leaves came and went as men warred over the shape of the table— peace would be talked in Paris, where Ho Chi Minh had been young once, hungry and hunted. Veteran of another war, my father wanted no squabbles at the supper table. What shape should it take to insure that we were out of…

i. Always the quality of mercy lies beyond us. ii. Somewhere I made mistakes but the light pitches my shadow against my eye as softly as cattail velvet might pacify a cheek. I can’t get tired of this steep and huge afternoon through which my error climbs looking for a weight with which to be…