Poetry

When she comes to take youaway she asks if your ringcomes off. You twist and twist. Yousurrender. Celeste saysit will come off later. In those next hoursso many doors open,none of them returning you to me. A manin the atrium belowplays piano— an ambling, jazzy, winespritzer. Noiseto fill the void. I’ve already forgotten her face,…

A mast year for acorns, so like marbles and so manywe’re afraid of falling. I walk sideways down the hill, holding a long stick; Kate goes before mewearing her orange knit cap. Everything alive is changing. Everythingun-alive is changing. What did we think to stop? The broken trees lean on the unbroken trees,which will one…

So, I’ve grown less apparent apparently:the young men walk their dogs, and when our dogs meetwe look at the dogs without raising our eyes to each other. The fathers stand outside the elementary school laughingwith the mothers—Exactly, one of them says to the other—my passing presence faded like a well-washed once-blue cotton shirt. Finally, I…

He asks what I want him to do to me, the next movecapable of unraveling our bodies precariously stacked.I tell him the truth: I don’t know. I do not tell himhow I still can’t feel my body when in another man’s arms.I travel—backward, forward—the horizon is concealedby the still-brown trees crowning the interstate,first through a…

Letter openers, proving we miss people urgently. Bottlecaps popping with satisfactory sound. All the miraculous ways to experience time— a roller coaster, a deep breath in sideways snow, flicker of windowsill basil glimpsed from an El stop at dusk. City streets patterned like plaid in a dishrag filling with sun. Portable stoves. Recycled stationary. The…

The featured pop star’s voice was too big for the waterfront pavilion. That’s what the reviewer said. Her recent poignant hit flew overhead, drifted right out the open sides  of the white tent, somehow tugging us with it, flinging us toward starswhere we hung briefly before landing among jellyfish and buoys. Once we were part of the water,…

After seven nights of silence, he woke to seven drawingsof a ram, pinned along his walls. Spit six seeds in a tin cup and trailed his hands along the white hallsinging about something to do with morning. My father sat his easel in the musicaland was a farmer, but wanted to be a painter. When…

What have you done?Opened this box of sound,warped like sand beneath water,remember that? The wavesof perception moving youaway from me. We grow farther apart,but we are equal in our ignoranceof how. No change there. Like celestialbodies distancing—like the animalsin autumn. How? This knowledge,how will you pin it down?How hard I look to trace the first…

After the protest at dusk, two policemen on horsebackclosing the park approached me and Vita and offered us rides home. Sheepish but game,we grabbed hold of their leather and galloped across field and hillto the edge. Gassed and smiling, we waved goodbye. Jim was waitingat the restaurant. I wanted to tell him there’s no heat…