It is hard to remember about the hardening man he is alive, hard not to hear in the shrill nonsense he speaks when he attempts to speak the chirping of a thrush, any ordinary bird hard to see (but look) beneath his sagging mask a face, once flesh, now lost, a planet— barren and featureless…
Once the phone, called the “telephone,” was a voice one heard by pressing what looked like a stethoscope to one’s ear, answering by shouting at a device on the wall. This was before talking on the phone was invented—a more intimate exchange using a receiver that allowed one to speak to the voice while holding…
Not sibylline but clear, empty weather; of the eight kinds of sky it was the milk-paled potion most like a cup of coffee she poured past full in such a way as to show herself how good she was, how the liquid lolled just over the white cup’s rim, just so the instant before an…
You meet at most four archbishops in a lifetime. You have at most one lifetime. You sing when in pain and expect to be heard. You see the outline of holy figures, their windows and blinds. You want to kiss the gold of the coat and you want it to come off on your lips….
from The Jade Buddha: A Sequence In the midst of a life, out by the propane tank, by the stacked timbers, while magpies kept up their quizzical cat-like calls in the piñons— a little threatening, their small part in the large thinking of the planet, their part to be clever and quick, seasonal marauders at…
Where would I be if not for your wild heart? I ask this not from love, but selfishly— How could I live? How could I make my art? Questions I wouldn’t ask if I was smart. Take the whole thing on faith. Blind eyes can see where I would be if not for your wild…
I loved one person do you see the evergreen there in fog one by one I was taught to withdraw first from him do you want to know how the mind works under extreme cold ice forming on the eyelid or wind thrown at me I felt every needle felt every breath…
There are nights I dream of goldfish and in my dreams they sing to me in fluted, piercing sopranos like the Vienna Boys’ Choir. Although in the daylight they are mostly silent and ravenous— the suction-cup grip of their mouths on my fingertip like tiny rubber bath- room plungers when they rise to strike at…
The shadow of a falling bird against a building is more real than the bird. Shadow of a glioblastoma on an MRI is not real at all. It will be short and brutal, the doctor says. She sees the shadow of her head on his shirt, sees a framed photo of the shadow of a…
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