Poetry

  • Emu of Wonder

    They took me to see the Emu of wonder eat out of a sack. They took me to see the Pronghorn pronking endlessly. They took me to see the White Hart at night, lit by headlights. I hiked to the top of the falls to see the Coho surrender. I heard the Pekinese suffering behind…

  • The Unbosoming

    I have been a day boarder, Lord. I have preferred the     table to the Bed. I have proffered, Lord, and I have profited, Lord,     but little, but not. I was Bored, Lord, I was heavy, Lord. Heavy bored. Hopeless,     Lord, hideous, Lord. Sexless. I was in love, Lord, but not with You….

  • Today’s Visibility

    I don’t know what I was thinking taking us to the Museum of Surgery but we left very glad of anesthetic and the sky entirely uncut-open. Later, it was nearly impossible to see the haystacks because it turned out we were in the Museum of Museum Guards. One woman was eight feet tall, her head…

  • Poem

    for Hilary In the lit room, an inkblot runs on a napkin like antlers into a three-quarter moon. Beginning to speak, I. . . gesture toward the ceiling, push my hair back behind my ear, wait— hearing a flower, red, blown by wind as on a prairie, in summer.

  • Untitled

    Rooms I (I will not say worked in) once heard in. Words my mouth heard, then — be with me. Rooms, you open onto one another in the mind: still house this life, be in me when I leave, don't take from me what took so long.

  • Prose Song

    Somebody medieval—the celebrated Anonymous of Bologna maybe—said that implicit in such an equation as 5=5 is the equality or equivalence (I for one get those two well mixed up) of all things fivefold, such that cinquefoil or quinquereme, let us say, can stand equally for a hand or a classic hand of stud or draw…

  • Rain

    When rain falls the crows shut their eyes and colors fade. They open them again in the darkness of their own wings. I stand at an intersection and let the headlights graze across my face. Leaves sink into sidewalks. Stores close, flags come down, but a warm wind rises through the grates. I want it…

  • Begin Here

    O onion, o open, o equal-eyed quail egg with swell yellow lake. O dove and small love effaced by a late disbelieving. O even and anti some ever come sun fall, red gloves and the rest on a day, on a divan, a sofa, a longue bit of chaise flecked with lint speckled blue (only…

  • Clock Appraisal

    The gear gold inside the golden-case clicks A hidden hour equal-to (an inch Of snow—between two hands, quartz-like—falls) equal-to The hour seen: jeweled-movement, minute-gear, in glass The main-spring winds the hour in the eye. One hour, measured twice: less equal seems The snow untracked to the foot-trod snow. I know. I know I know. I…